


Enduring Pain with Patience

by brazenedMinstrel, xore



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anti-bury your gays trope, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Deviates From Canon, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Family Drama, Femslash, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Internalized Homophobia, Jaina Needs a Nap, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Relationship(s), Sad with a Happy Ending, Self-Hatred, Slow Burn, Sylvanas Needs A Nap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2020-08-13 05:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 90,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brazenedMinstrel/pseuds/brazenedMinstrel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/xore/pseuds/xore
Summary: “It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.” -Julius CaesarThe Forsaken have turned on Sylvanas. When Jaina and the rest of the Alliance leaders arrive in Orgrimmar, it seems as if weeks of debates and councils will be in store for the Lord Admiral. Instead of waiting, Jaina decides to find out what is going on by herself, and she finds Sylvanas dying on the Warchief’s throne.A story about honour, healing, and the complications of being undead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Katzenjammers for betareading and putting up with our nonsense. You are truly the Vereesa to our two idiot sons.
> 
> This fic has been a long time coming, and we've been teasing the sylvaina discords with some pretty depressing excerpts. Hopefully this will be worth it! -xore
> 
> Sorry for the angst, it’ll be different in chapter 2 -brazenedMinstrel

_“In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes."_ _\- Julius Caesar_

They had won. Jaina still could scarcely believe the news, but they had won. Reports had started to arrive in the evening. Forsaken running from Orgrimmar, bodies of Dark Rangers being found at Horde strongholds. Within a night, she’d gone to three separate meetings with leaders of both factions. There she’d heard the rumours confirmed. 

The Horde had turned on Sylvanas Windrunner and aside from the most loyal of her followers, Sylvanas had stood alone to fight for what was left of her life. Reports coming every few minutes stated that she had holed up in Grommash Hold. Dark Rangers stood outside the gates of Orgrimmar, not allowing anyone to pass. Even when Jaina arrived with the rest of the Alliance leaders, she couldn’t quite tell if the rangers had yet turned on their queen as well.

“They’re not allowing anyone through,” Anduin said as he approached her, coming back from speaking with one of the more morbid-looking undead. Jaina had known the boy his entire life. She had known him when he was kidnapped by the Horde and when he had saved her from death’s grip, as well as throughout this entire war, but she’d never known him to look so tired. Even his young age could not conceal the dark bags under his eyes after endless hours of meetings that left little time for food, let alone sleep. “If these rangers are to be believed, then it seems as though the Horde leadership is currently meeting amongst themselves to decide on Sylvanas’s fate. They have allowed the stationing of the guards.”

Jaina knew that the Horde leadership he spoke of was diverse. Between Thrall and Saurfang, Lor’themar and Thalyssra, Talanji, Baine and Gallywix, opinions were bound to differ as much as their appearances. Thus, she figured, if the councils of the Alliance leaders were anything to go by, it could take anywhere between hours and weeks to come to a decision. If she wanted to know what was going on in Grommash Hold, she would have to find out by herself. She set a hand on Anduin’s shoulder, giving it a small squeeze in what she desperately hoped would come off as reassuring. “I will handle it. You really must sit for a moment.”

Alleria stepped forward from where she stood between Velen and Vereesa, looking as though she were about to protest Jaina’s decision, but the mage was stubborn more often than not and her mind was already made up. In a manner that reminded her much of her adventures when she was but an apprentice, she cast a few concealment spells upon her being and teleported forward in two small jumps. The first was just before the line of Dark Rangers, simply to check whether or not they were able to see her. Once she was certain that she was in the clear, she teleported forward once more behind their line and into the city. The grounds in front of the Hold were devoid of life, truly. Save for corpses of the Forsaken, which held even less life than they had in their undeath, she could not spot anything. And it seemed as though the rangers had not noticed her, so Jaina allowed her concealment to drop as she stepped over a few bodies to make her way into the Hold.

The massive, almost royal-looking doors of the front were open just a crack, which frankly surprised Jaina. As she approached, she could see why. The corpse of a Forsaken soldier was jammed between them, its body littered with half a dozen arrows that pierced through key spots in the body. Jaina couldn’t help the chill that ran down her spine as she pushed the large door open further, allowing her to enter the Hold without having to step on or over the arrow-riddled corpse that laid before her. 

The door creaked as it opened, and Jaina silently cursed as she cast a minor muffling spell. She dismissed it when she had once again allowed the door to rest against the definitely shattered legs of the Forsaken soldier. Though once she looked to the hallway before the throne room, she desperately wished she’d kept it active for a few seconds more. A sharp gasp came before she could stop it, and she covered her mouth before she could make another damned sound at the horrific sight that awaited her. 

Bodies littered the entire hall, making it absolutely impossible for her to walk through it without stepping over them. Some sagged against the walls while other laid on the floor. Quite a few still had their weapons in hand. All of them, however, bore white-feathered arrows in their sickly flesh. Many close to the doors had only one or two, typically in the heart, throat, or brain. As Jaina continued her walk through the grisly scene, however, she saw more and more corpses with several arrows in seemingly random places, as though they were shot in a hurry.

Not wanting to linger long in a space with naught more than twice-dead corpses, Jaina hurriedly made her way through. She stepped over limbs and weapons, trying not to look too much at the utter bloodshed that decorated the walls and floor. 

The door to the throne room was shut and, surprisingly, only one corpse slouched against the wall before it. An arrow protruded from his heart; it was shot with so much power that the fletching was the only part that didn’t stick out from his well-preserved body. One hand held a bow and the other an axe. His eyes, still open, no longer burned with anger and resentment, now only a dull maroon that Jaina could only describe as tired. She hesitated before deciding against shutting Nathanos’s eyes.

When she first stepped into the throne room, she thought it empty. No orcs feasted, no tauren and goblins chattered along the walls. Not a single breath aside from her own slightly ragged one sounded in the large space. Yet when she slowly walked further, readying arcane in her hands in case the Banshee had a trap at the ready, she heard the slightest rustle. A creak of leather and a tap of a sharp heel against the floor, sounding as purposeful as every other thing she’d done in her time on this planet. 

Sylvanas Windrunner lifted her gaze so her red eyes were focused on Jaina. She was sitting on the Warchief’s throne, one leg casually crossed over the other, hands draped over the armrests, spreading an air of indifference around her. Jaina froze. Arcane sparked on her skin, but she refrained from firing a spell that would have left the former Warchief as splatters against the throne. Noble, honourable leaders had once sat there, she felt like dirtying it was doing them wrong. 

“Ah, _ Proudmoore_,” the undead elf purred, cutting off Jaina’s thoughts with a click of her tongue against her fangs. “I was wondering when you would arrive.” She paused, a smirk pulling itself onto her lips. “Though I suppose I mean your Alliance in general. _ You _ are of very little concern, more a nuisance than all else.”

The infuriating air of arrogance that Sylvanas had displayed in Lordaeron was no different here. Jaina held her tongue, refusing to allow herself to fall to her bait. She wanted to say that she had managed to make her way past the Dark Rangers and into Orgrimmar completely alone, but that was likely a poor idea. She wanted to say that she was far more than simply a nuisance to the banshee, given how easily she had stopped the spread of her blight. She wanted to say that she shouldn’t be taken so lightly, when she still carried the pain of Derek being raised and almost used against her. Instead, she took a few steps further. “You are surrounded, Banshee,” she said, coating her voice in as much confidence as she could muster. 

“Yes, yes… Horde and Alliance around the Hold, united and ready to strike. How splendid.” Sylvanas tapped the nail of her glove onto the throne, seemingly unaffected by Jaina’s poise. “Or, do tell, are they _ talking_? Will your King try to meddle in the Horde’s affairs?”

“You are not of the Horde anymore.” Jaina found the words slipping out of her mouth before she knew it. 

In return, Sylvanas only sighed, with breath they both knew that she did not need to draw in. It was then that Jaina heard the hitch in her sigh. The difficult exhale, the strained swallow that followed. Closer she came still, until she stood just a few paces before the steps leading up to the throne. Sylvanas did not move, only regarding her with her long eyebrows haughtily updrawn as Jaina studied her form. The moment she saw the bow laying across Sylvanas’s lap, she drew a shield up, causing the faintest purple glow around her form. But upon closer inspection, the bow was broken. The mighty Deathwhisper lay snapped in half across the elf’s knees, only connected by its frayed string. Jaina glanced to her back, now seeing that she had no more arrows left in her quiver.

“So quick in your arts, Lord Admiral,” Sylvanas smoothly taunted. “And so _ hesitant_.” She truly snarled the last word, uncrossing her legs and grasping the armrest tighter. The bow fell from her lap, clattering onto the hard floor with a sound that echoed through the hall. 

At that moment, when Jaina saw the barest hint of a break in Sylvanas’s composure, the mage narrowed her eyes. Sylvanas’s wine red leather armour was oddly dented in places. Her left pauldron was chipped and there was a gash in her chainmail leggings. In fact, nearly the entirety of her right thigh was coloured darkly with blood. There were numerous holes and punctures in her armour, as well as burnt spots where she had undoubtedly been struck with magic. The shadows of the throne could no longer conceal the Banshee Queen’s injuries, now that Jaina stood so close to her. This was not Lordaeron. No, this was an obscene mockery of the casual calmness that Sylvanas had displayed there. 

“Are you finished staring, Proudmoore?” Sylvanas purred the words, as though she was completely unbothered by how wounded her body was. Jaina had always assumed that the Forsaken felt little to no pain, given the lifelessness of their bodies, but her time spent with Derek had proved her wrong. Derek felt pain, both physical and emotional, and Jaina knew well that no matter how good of a costume Sylvanas wore, she was still in pain. She saw the gash on Sylvanas’s face, an ugly ragged wound that slashed her face from the eyebrow down to the left corner of her mouth, and suddenly found herself unable to answer the banshee’s question. 

When she didn’t get an answer, much less a satisfactory one, Sylvanas rose from the throne. She took a step, without stumbling. Briefly, Jaina wondered whether her injuries were all a show or not. Sylvanas took another step in her direction and she readied her arcane for the ensuing battle. In the blink of an eye, the purple glow of the shield surrounding her had doubled its intensity and a frostbolt was conjured in her left hand, ready for the fight the banshee would surely bring.

But no fight came. 

Instead, the banshee’s legs gave out beneath her and she fell face first down to the cold tiles below. The movement was so sudden and so heavy that Jaina couldn’t stop a startled gasp as she took a few quick steps backwards. Sylvanas didn’t make a sound when she hit the floor. Only when Jaina’s breathing had calmed down slightly, did she empty her dead lungs of blood with a gurgling wheeze. One of her hands twitched, but she failed to complete whatever movement she had wanted to make. As Jaina stood a few short paces from the fallen queen, staring at her in equal parts horror and pure surprise, Sylvanas laughed. It was not sly, as Jaina was so used to, but rather an ugly, grating laugh that came from deep in her lungs, bringing more splatters of blood with it. 

“Why have you come, Lord Admiral? Did you expect me to run away like that cowardly orc you seem so fond of? Or should I have simply given up like that weakling Saurfang? Or perhaps _ conspired with the Alliance_, like-” 

“Enough,” Jaina said, her word not a request. It was a demand, and Sylvanas surprisingly fell quiet. Her words caused a stinging sensation in Jaina’s chest, briefly making her wonder if she’d been stabbed in the heart. She could feel her magic crackle in her hands anew. “At least Thrall and Saurfang have honour.” 

Sylvanas gave her a wide-eyed stare from underneath her hood for a few seconds before grimacing and pushing herself up on her elbow, only to fail and fall onto her side again. “Honour.” She spat out the word, treating it no better than the dark blood that stained the floor beside her head. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.” 

“As if you, who burnt thousands of innocent night elves, know what _ honour _ is! You are in no position to speak of- ” The rest of Jaina’s beginning of a rant petered out when she spotted the gleaming metal in Sylvanas’s back. There, buried deep into flesh and bone between the banshee’s shoulder blades, was an axe identical to the one that Nathanos had died holding.

Undoubtedly, the Banshee Queen noticed her looking. She groaned in pain as she spoke, mocking Jaina’s quivering angry voice. “And as if you, who slaughtered innocents in Dalaran with my dear little sister, know what honour is.” She scoffed, her voice returning to her typical scorning tone. “No one in this world knows the meaning of honour. Not you. Not Wrynn. Certainly not the mutt. Not Thrall. And not Saurfang. _ Belore_, as conceited as it may sound, I may be the only leader amongst us who still knows the definition of the word.”

Jaina could feel her jaw clench, and she made no attempt to relax it. “I’m sure you believe that,” she said, an air of annoyance in her voice. “That still does not make it true.”

“Well, perhaps the First Arcanist grasps the meaning of it. I am sure the Alliance underestimates what she put herself through for her people, or perhaps the Night Warrior whispered despising words into your ears.” A dry laugh came from the body beneath her, followed by another spit of blood. It landed near Jaina’s boot, and though she was unsure if that was intentional or not, she did not move in retaliation. “My first death, by the hands of the simply _ cavalier _ man you dated, was possibly the most honourable moment in my long life and subsequent undeath,” Sylvanas said, stating it as though it were a fact.

Jaina wouldn’t deny the claim - in fact, if she were being fully honest, it was likely true that Sylvanas’s refusal to simply hand her homeland over to the scourge _ was _ indeed the most honourable moment of her life - but she took a bit of offense to the mention of her relationship with Arthas. “I had nothing to do with his invasion of Quel’thalas, if that’s what you’re-”

“I battled day and night, hardly resting a moment to sleep or eat. My rangers had to beg me to simply drink water. When they nearly dropped dead from exhaustion, I guarded the campsite at night, alone. I slaughtered hundreds upon hundreds of scourge forces and set their plans so far back, the Lich King despised me personally. I did not stop fighting, even when faced with death itself. _ That _ was true honour.” Wordlessly, Jaina knelt beside her. She did not try to lift Sylvanas up, nor assist her with her wounds, but instead simply listened to the woman as she spoke. “He found it necessary to defile my body and soul, refusing to allow me the surrender of a peaceful death. I did not give in. Did you know that, Proudmoore? I refused to surrender, even as a near formless shred of my spirit. Until he flayed my soul in such terrible agony you cannot even _ begin _to imagine… and I woke up in a body that was both mine and not. Another useful puppet for the Lich King. ”

Sylvanas’s eyelids drooped and she sighed again, breathlessly. It occurred to Jaina that she’d never seen the elf look so exhausted. Even her usually fiery eyes stood dimmed and listless. The Lord Admiral wondered why she was still talking and not attempting to flee. Perhaps she knew that Jaina would stop and kill her in the blink of an eye, though more likely she just liked the sound of her own voice. 

“And all the while… all that time, I felt the Lich King gnawing at my mind, whittling away at the resolve that I still held. The hope - perhaps it was hope - that I could still escape. I saw the fate of my fellow rangers -” 

“Your banshees,” Jaina interrupted, sneering the latter word as she said it. 

“My fellow rangers who had fought faithfully by my side. Who were tortured and had their souls ripped apart, like me.” Sylvanas grasped one of the broken arrows that protruded from her armour by the waist, tugging with the little strength she had until it gave way with the horrible squelch of metal sliding out of flesh. It took all Jaina’s willpower not to look away as Sylvanas threw it onto the ground and pushed herself up on her elbow. The Banshee Queen tilted her head, so her hood slipped off and Jaina got a full view of the bone deep gash on her face, where blood trickled out over her neck. “And what did you do when we had wrested ourselves from his control without land, family, or much sanity to speak of?” Closer she leaned to Jaina, pointing a sharp finger at her despite the fact that her lower arm looked like it had been nearly hacked in half, disjointed and weirdly bent. “You threw us out, that is what you did. So we had to find a home, a family. Alone and _ forsaken _ by the people we used to be one with.” Sylvanas grimaced, falling back on her side. “Now tell me, Jaina Proudmoore, that you or anyone of the Alliance truly knows what honour is.” 

Jaina bristled at that. Where to begin? So many Alliance heroes - faction leaders or otherwise - had given their lives to help Azeroth. She supposed she should start with the most recent, and likely best known, example. “Well, Varian-”

“Yes, yes, perhaps the elder Wrynn knew. But he died because he was too... they call it courageous - to listen to my signal for the retreat. I was not going to die like a pig in the slaughterhouse _ again_, and I was even kind enough to warn him of what was to come. I do not simply call for retreat when it suits me, _ Proudmoore_.” Jaina’s name sounded like a hiss on Sylvanas’s lips. “His actions after my horn were his own. His choice and his fault, not mine. Though I’m sure the mutt would claim otherwise.”

“And I suppose you believe Genn is honourless as well? Despite the fact, of course, that he was the one to rally Alliance champions and save me from Thros.” Aside from spies, which Jaina was sure that Sylvanas had once had plenty of, there was little way Sylvanas could have known about that. Still, she cared deeply for King Greymane, and would not soon forget the troubles he went through to save her from her constant nightmares.

“How noble,” Sylvanas purred, inspecting the claws of her glove uncaringly as though she was not laying on the ground with the axe of her most trusted advisor lodged in her back. Jaina almost questioned if she was listening to her. “Tell me, Proudmoore, what your definition of honour is.”

That gave Jaina pause. Not only did she need to take a moment to consider how she would define honour, but she also found herself the slightest bit taken aback that Sylvanas was actually allowing her to speak. Though she knew she had no one here to impress, Jaina sat up straighter. “Honour is the duty that we, as individuals, have to our society to better it,” she said after her pause, her voice more confident than she’d expected. “It’s courage in the face of fear and certainty in the face of doubt. It allows us to lift those around us up and create a kinder, stronger, and more caring future for our people.”

The Banshee Queen drew up a single wispy eyebrow. “Oh _ Belore, _ \- ” she said. “Did I just hear a description of the Ranger-General of Quel’Thalas? Duty, courage, caring future. Certainly… it all sounds so familiar.” 

“I do not deny that your actions when you lived were honourable. What you did in your undeath is another matter entirely.” 

The scorn in her words only drew a dry chuckle out of Sylvanas, though it was followed by a sharp wince and the jerk of one of Sylvanas’s legs as she undoubtedly strained one of her injuries. “Undeath does things to a person’s psyche, Proudmoore,” she murmured, her voice suddenly heavy with an emotion that Jaina could not fully place. For a moment the Banshee Queen looked grave, defeated nearly. “It is difficult to stay sane and honourable, when you have no home and no family, no allies to speak of… I am sure you know what I mean, when you wanted to flood Orgrimmar.”

Tides, this woman must _ want _ her to fling an ice bolt directly through her heart. Jaina set her jaw and bit her lip, fighting hard with each passing moment to simply stay quiet and listen. Sylvanas was not finished yet. “Not to mention working together with a literal horde of idiots, each one possessing more stupidity than the next.” 

“Then why did you stand up to lead them?” Jaina snapped. “Why did you not leave it to someone else?” 

“Only the gods know that, Proudmoore. Vol’jin’s gods. They chose me. Should I have refused, surrounded by so many people? Imagine the chaos that would have broken out. The hours upon hours of talking, trying to decide who would be the best Warchief.” Sylvanas sighed, shifting in a futile attempt to relieve her maimed arm. “Surely you know how those talks go. Who would have come out on top: the most honourable leader… or the one who yells the loudest?” 

The one who yelled the loudest of all Horde leaders, Jaina realized with a shudder, was most likely Gallywix. She detested the fact that Sylvanas was so very right. If the usual actions of the Alliance leaders were anything to go by, it could have sparked anything from months of discussions to a civil war, and neither the Alliance nor the Horde could afford such luxuries during the relentless attacks from the Burning Legion. Still, the arrogance that Sylvanas displayed was ever present, despite the almost pitiful way she was sprawled out on the ground, and Jaina found herself attempting to curb the elf’s gloating. “Regardless of why you were chosen, you did not… you failed to remain true to your promise to the Horde. As Warchief, it is your duty to protect your people.”

“I did,” Sylvanas immediately hissed, and it was soon followed by a soft chuckle. “I did,” she repeated, her tone far lighter. “The moment a storm brewed on the horizon of Lordaeron, I evacuated my city. The moment we caught sight of _ your _ ships sailing to Nazmir, and then Dazar’alor, I sent any and all troops I could spare to assist defend the city and the King. Not once in my life did I wish to rule an entire kingdom, let alone an entire faction’s worth of people. But I have done everything in my power to assure a future for not only the Forsaken, but also for the Horde.” Her voice took on a more serious tone as she locked eyes with Jaina. “I protected the Horde as you attempted to protect your Alliance, Proudmoore.” 

Jaina felt her blood begin to boil, telltale sparks of arcane beginning to dance over her skin. Once more she found it necessary to calm herself, though she did allow words this time around. “We are nothing alike,” she seethed. 

“Are we not?” Sylvanas asked, only pretending to be surprised. Despite the fact that the left side of her face briefly screwed in pain and Jaina saw more dark blood well up in the joint of the armour in her elbow, the Banshee Queen kept her composure as best as she could. “Do you want to know the difference between my blighting of Lordaeron and your near-flooding of Orgrimmar, Lady Proudmoore? There were far fewer living souls in my city than in the one you once planned to eviscerate. Far fewer innocent simply going about their day and living their lives. Far fewer buildings to demolish and families to destroy.”

A ball of icy energy collected suddenly in the palm of Jaina’s right hand, yet she forced herself to squeeze her fist shut and let it evaporate, if only to make sure she would not get another snide comment about honour if she struck Sylvanas while the elf was on the ground before her. After a moment of effort, she found herself able to ban most of the anger that caused her voice to tremble. “It is not something that the Ranger-General you once were would have done.”

“As I already said, Proudmoore, undeath changes a person.” She paused briefly, before a smirk overtook her lips. Already Jaina found herself dreading whatever it was she would say next. “As does a mana bomb. I am sure your hair isn’t the only thing that is no longer what it once was.” 

“You don’t know what happened that day, Sylvanas,” Jaina spat, suddenly unable to hold back her fury. The undead had no reason and no right at all to dig up that particular event. 

Despite her facial wound, which trailed a thin trickle of dark blood over one of her fangs, Sylvanas grinned. “After hearing Little Moon cry for hours about that city, about her dear beloved, when we met by Garrosh’s trial, I think I know what I need to.” 

Jaina had forgotten. _ How could Vereesa ever have trusted her? _she thought, swallowing away a sour taste. Then again, she knew firsthand how badly grief could blind a person, and how easy it was to become vulnerable to the first person you happened upon. “It is none of your business, banshee. What happened that day… and what happened during the trial. You have no right to mock the - those circumstances.”

“I am not mocking anyone, Proudmoore,” Sylvanas purred, seemingly unaffected by Jaina’s poorly concealed anger. “Was that not what you felt too then, Proudmoore? After _ Theramore_?” 

The name of her beloved city made a white-hot fury rise in Jaina’s mind unlike she had felt since entering the Hold. “This is exactly the mockery I speak of! You dare to mention my city, as - ”

“Your Theramore, my Silvermoon. It is the same sense of… home, of belonging, that we share when we hear their names. Regardless of your uncouth interjection, is it not the feeling that ruled your heart for so long after it had been blown asunder? The fear, the horrors, the feeling that you could trust no one, and no one trusted you?” Sylvanas’s eyes gained a somewhat dreamy glaze as she looked away from Jaina’s, up to the ceiling, only to land on the mage’s face again with a piercing, haunting glare. “Yes, that’s it. Now you remember what overtook you. Did you think I don’t know how that rage feels? The _ rage _ of no one listening to you, of no one taking you seriously? Of no one helping you? I felt it when I burned that tree. All because that coward could not execute his own plan of attack. Because he could not slay that whimpering druid. No, he decided to have us all fail, so we were weak and open for your attack on the Undercity. And so, I failed to save my city twice. Was it so strange for me to act upon the rage I felt? If only I’d had a Thrall to convince me, then and there, that no, the night elves could not have spared a few Sentinels to help me drive the Lich King away from my homeland.” 

Jaina licked her drying lips while scouring her mind for a reply, but she found none and could only clench her hands into fists to fight down the tears she felt burning in her throat. 

“Of course not,” Sylvanas scoffed. “No one could have convinced me that they could not have come to the aid of the Quel’dorei. They just turned their backs on us. Perhaps that was the first time I was… _ ah_, forsaken. You know how that feels too, Lord Admiral, don’t you?”

Despite the fact that Jaina did not want to admit anything to the Banshee Queen, especially since she was speaking to her in a manner both degenerating and mocking, she could not deny that she knew the hollow feeling all too well. She was suddenly acutely aware of how strikingly white the vast majority of her hair was. “Yes,” she grated. “I know how it feels to be forsaken.” 

“Very good,” Sylvanas said in that endlessly infuriating silky tone of voice. “We have that in common, at least. I wonder what else we share.” 

The room went quiet, save for Jaina’s uneasy breathing, as they both stirred in the wake of Sylvanas’s words. Jaina wanted to say that they shared nothing, but she knew that the banshee made a good point. 

“You are not the only person in Azeroth with an understanding of honour,” she eventually said, loathe to admit that Sylvanas _ did _ have an understanding of the word. “As High King, with his warm heart, Anduin knows what it means, too. He treats all of his subjects with respect and kindness, akin to no other I’ve seen before.”

Sylvanas only laughed, mocking Jaina’s fond tone with her biting smirk. “Yes, I’m sure he is the epitome of respect and kindness. As was his father, when he refused to pay the stonemasons who rebuilt Stormwind from the ground. Besides, that is only chivalry, not honour. As the Ranger-General, I too knew how to do those fancy charades. Speak to all the elven nobles with respect, a wave and a kiss on their glove, even if they knew nothing of military tactics and tried to correct me on them. But grovelling is naught more than that: grovelling.” 

“He also heals on the battlefield, during and after the fight. Footmen, knights, or even peasants who were caught up in the fray, it does not matter to him,” Jaina argued. 

“And _ that_, Proudmoore, is called mercy. No leader should have an excess of it, for they will grow lax and vulnerable. He is still so young, do you wish for him to become a soft-minded man?” 

Jaina wanted nothing but to wipe the smirk off the Banshee Queen’s face with an ice bolt or several. “Do not threaten Anduin!” she hissed. 

“Threaten? So quick to make assumptions, little mage. You disappoint me. I thought you were wiser, that you knew how dangerous it is to be too merciful. Yet you are so fond of the little lion, that you let it blind you!” Sylvanas pushed herself up on an elbow, snarling at Jaina with all her teeth bared. But before she could spit out another sentence, she suddenly grasped for her chest with a clawed gauntlet as a spurt of blood welled up between the straps of her leather cuirass. One of her wounds had been opened anew by the movement, or perhaps she had pushed an arrowhead deeper into her flesh. Falling back onto the floor, she writhed in pain, groaning between her teeth as Jaina watched on in slight horror. After a dozen seconds of spasms, Sylvanas lay still on the floor as her blood began to pool underneath her. 

“I _ tried_, Proudmoore.” The smooth, more often than not cold voice of Sylvanas was muffled against the floor, and exuded nothing more than bare exhaustion. “I have done everything in my power to help the Horde, help the Forsaken… and none of it truly mattered. I never wanted this. All I ever wanted, since the moment I saw the damned prince charge towards me with his blade drawn, was to rest.” She paused for a moment, then laughed bitterly. “Did you know that I killed myself? Not many do. The moment Arthas was defeated and the Lich King was contained, I threw myself off of the top of Icecrown Citadel. That was, by far, the best moment of this wretched unlife.

“Even then, I didn’t get a moment’s rest. I was immediately thrown into a hell like no other, a hell where I saw Arthas. A hell where I would be trapped in an unknown realm of anguish for eternity. At first, my goal was to hunt that son of a bitch down, and now I want nothing more than to escape him, and escape the fate we share together.” 

The room went silent for a few moments as Jaina took in what Sylvanas had just told her. She thought briefly of what it was she hated most in the world. The Horde itself a decent amount, yes, but the name that burned in the forefront of her mind, haunting her like no other… Garrosh Hellscream. What would it be like to spend an eternity, tormented by the man who had taken _ everything _ from her when she already had very little to begin with? No home to return to, not even the one she had built herself. No family to love, by blood or by choice. _ Nothing_. The thought itself made her shudder, and she realized that she understood why Sylvanas so desperately wanted to escape that fate. It would come nonetheless, but every moment away from it was one less she would have to spend in it.

Sylvanas continued. “I never wanted to lead the Forsaken, or even be Forsaken, for that matter. I never wanted to be Warchief. I never wanted to fight this war, against the people I used to call my allies. I never wanted to live a moment longer than my heartbeat.” She huffed out a dry, unneeded sigh that almost sounded like a laugh. “I don’t want to die,” she admitted, her voice small. “But in the end, death claims us all.”

Again, it seemed as if the Banshee Queen had perished, as her eyes were half closed and her body did not move anymore. Yet as Jaina rose to her feet, she stirred. Perhaps the rustle of Jaina’s clothing alerted her, but the mage had little time to muse on that before Sylvanas spoke again. “Proudmoore,” she wheezed, her voice so quiet that Jaina had to kneel down again to catch every word. “The axe… remove it. I will not die with a traitor’s blade in my back.” 

Though it sounded like a command, and Jaina was not going to blindly obey one coming from _ Sylvanas_, she stepped over the undead elf’s body and grasped the leather-wrapped handle of the weapon. Sylvanas winced, a soft yet sharp sound of pain coming from her throat. A tremble shot through her body and Jaina drew her eyebrows together in slight sympathy. Then she pulled, wrenching the axe partially out of Sylvanas’s back. Yet Nathanos had thrown it with such force that she had to tug again, and a third time, to free it completely. The second forceful pull had Sylvanas clenching her eyes shut and groaning from between gnashing teeth. By the last one she suddenly screamed, high and shriller than Jaina had expected. With a violent movement she twisted her body, flipping over on her back. 

For a few moments, which seemed to take an eternity, she stared wide-eyed at the high ceiling of the throne room. Then she shuddered and, at last, her eyes closed. 

Jaina threw the axe away from her as if it was a snarling animal. Then, with utmost care and more than a little bit of hesitation, she lifted two fingers to the cold skin of Sylvanas’s throat. She did not expect to feel a heartbeat, rather sending a soft pulse of arcane outwards to sense whatever energies kept Sylvanas functioning. As thanks, because she did feel an irregular rush of necromantic magic, Sylvanas spat a mouthful of blood over her hand. Withdrawing with a sharp shriek, she hastily sat up on one knee, wary of a trick like what Sylvanas had pulled on her in Lordaeron. She was so quick, in fact, that she nearly missed the words Sylvanas gurgled. 

“The throne.”

“Throne?” Jaina repeated the word slowly, almost cautiously, as her eyebrows furrowed together further in confusion. What could Sylvanas possibly want with her throne; to burn it? Not understanding what in the world Sylvanas wished to do, she eyed the large seat with its tattered red Horde flag behind it briefly before glancing back to the woman below her. A nod was the only response Jaina received, as it was likely all she could do. Even so much as speaking seemed too exhausting. 

Jaina looked back and forth between the undead’s limp figure and the throne a couple times. Then she said, gesturing with a hand between the two: “You… you want-?” 

Another small nod. 

Sighing, she knelt down again. She slipped an arm under Sylvanas’s back, pulling her upright while simultaneously trying to avoid the deep wound made by the axe. She was not sure why Sylvanas wanted to go to the throne so desperately, even though she had said things that would, perhaps, marginally, make her worthy of sitting on it. Still, she dared not question the banshee’s decision, and carried her over to gently set her down on the seat.

The moment she was set down, Sylvanas weakly pushed at Jaina’s shoulders. She grunted as she did, as though using all of the energy left in her frail body to do something as mundane as getting Jaina to step back. Though when Jaina pulled away and slipped her arm out from underneath the elf’s back, Sylvanas’s glove lingered on her, seeking support for the briefest of moments before she drew it back and let it limply hang besides her body. A huff made its way past cold lips and, while wincing in pain, Sylvanas shifted herself. She spread her legs a bit and relaxed against the back of the throne, her arms resting casually on the armrests. She looked almost nonchalant, uncaring of the obvious wounds that painted her body.

Searching Jaina’s face with an expression somewhere in between feigned calmness and a wide-eyed gaze that made her look oddly concerned, Sylvanas opened her mouth to say something, only to close it again and frown deeply. Her head rolled to the side as an unnecessary, shuddering breath left her body.

“Thank you, Jai - Proudmoore,” she eventually murmured. “For… listening. Not many other leaders would have.” Though so much of her power had been used up just by getting herself into a comfortable, confident position on the throne, it almost seemed like admitting that Jaina had helped her took more effort. 

“Yes… I - It seemed-” Before Jaina could piece together a sentence that could even begin to encompass the hundred different feelings she had about listening and even marginally aiding Sylvanas, the undead shivered on the throne.

It took several seconds, in which she sharply jerked her head from side to side before finally lying still as the glow faded from her eyes. 

Jaina forced back sharp tears that pricked in her eyes and stung her throat. She refused to allow them to flow, instead drawing in a shuddering breath and forcing herself to look away from Sylvanas’s motionless body splayed out on the throne. She would not cry for the Banshee Queen. Perhaps she would mourn the Ranger-General of Quel’Thalas, whom she pitied with the core of her being, when she was alone in her chambers in Proudmoore Keep. For now, however, she set her jaw, clenched her hand into a tight fist, and turned stiffly to make her way towards the door. 

She only made it a few steps before something heavy thudded behind her, and she froze. 

Both her breath and heart racing, Jaina turned, expecting a trap or a sudden ambush. Her mind soared with thoughts of what may come in the second it took her to spin around. Perhaps Nathanos was still alive, and his body in the hallway had simply been a figment of her imagination. He could be hiding, lurking in the shadows, ready to strike. Perhaps Sylvanas wasn’t nearly as weak as she seemed to be, and her entire speech had been yet another plot designed to throw Jaina off guard to slaughter her. Perhaps there was another door to this part of the Hold, and another Horde leader had come. Had they seen her, listening to the banshee and allowing her a death on her own terms?

Relief flooded her veins, quickly followed by another bout of pity as Jaina took in the sight awaiting her. Sylvanas had fallen from the throne and laid in front of it, a crumpled heap of armour, flesh and blood. Jaina almost laughed at her own foolishness, but held back. She knew that, if she had any life still left in her body, Sylvanas would take offense to that laughter. 

She stood still for a moment, simply watching the eerie stillness of the body that laid not too far from her. She almost turned again, resigning herself to the simple fact that Sylvanas was _ dead,_ when slow trickles of black smoke seeped from her body and slithered over the floor. Instinctively, Jaina cast a shield, bracing herself for the horrid screech she convinced herself was to come. 

Yet this time, Sylvanas’s banshee form did not suddenly burst into being. Rather, the smoke collected above the body, filtering in and out of it, rising and falling irregularly, as if desperately trying to form something more solid but failing time and time again. Eventually, Sylvanas’s blood red eyes burned through and Jaina heard a sound coming from her. It was nothing like the scream she had heard in Lordaeron. It was almost a breath, but not quite. Deep, hoarse, and roughened. A moan, nearly, but not entirely. A sound filled with so much grief that Jaina nearly dispelled her shield and stepped forward to help her. 

As Sylvanas moved over the floor, she shambled, not entirely solid. Sometimes, Jaina could discern parts of her body; a leg, a pauldron, a single long ear. Yet more often than not she only saw a vaguely elf-shaped cloud of smoke. It was as if the banshee shimmered in and out of existence, so weak that she could barely hold herself together. When she had reached Jaina, leaving a trail of blood behind her, the utterly pitiful sight did make the Lord Admiral drop her shield that time. Even if Sylvanas wanted to harm her, Jaina was sure that she would just phaze through her. 

Sylvanas’s face was visible in intervals: first scrunched up in agony, then with smoky tears trailing further over her cheeks, then with her mouth opened wide in a silent scream. Though her voice was disembodied, there was an unknowable pain and sorrow in her words. 

“Will you… stop me, Proudmoore?” Her voice was naught more than a whisper, almost sounding trapped in the back of her throat. It was by far the most pathetic, vulnerable noise that Jaina had ever heard the banshee make. Her breath died in her throat. While she doubted, a thousand thoughts and arguments both for and against flitting through her mind, Sylvanas melted before her and righted herself up from the smoke with a desperately clenched hand that reached for the ceiling of the hold.

“No,” Jaina said, at least as quietly as the undead, whilst shaking her head. “Where - Where will you go?” 

While Sylvanas looked at her, her glowing eyes seemed to focus on a point behind Jaina. The smoke obscured her features for a moment, showing just a split second of an expression of blind fear before leaving just the red of her eyes. Sylvanas did not have much of a voice left when she spoke again. A rasp that seemed to come from the air around her rather than from her collapsing form said to Jaina:

“Home.”

_ Home? _Jaina thought. Her gaze drifted downwards, to look away from the banshee’s haunting eyes. She stepped forward, slowly stretching out a hand in a gesture that she did not pretend to know what it was supposed to resemble. But she could not get closer than a hand width from Sylvanas’s body, the smoke unraveled, spreading backwards over the floor in a split second before surging upwards. With a raw, throat-burning scream, though not a banshee’s ear-splitting cry, Sylvanas flung herself through one of the windows of the Hold with her last ounce of strength. 

The glass shattered, a few wayward splinters falling back to coat the floor of the Hold as the rest of it disappeared from her sight. For a few moments, Jaina only heard it falling, and her own racing breath. Then she was alone. 

She stared at the shattered window that Sylvanas had escaped from, far too high off of the ground for her to get near. She doubted anyone would ask about it, but if they did, it would be easy enough for her to claim that it was the product of a banshee wail. And what of Sylvanas’s remains? Certainly none of the leaders - Alliance, Horde, or anything in between - would believe her should she claim Sylvanas died, and then be unable to produce a corpse. 

Briefly, it occurred to Jaina that there was no reason for her to put in such effort to help this woman. She had once in the past, in retaking the Undercity following Wrathgate, but that had clearly been a mistake. Lordaeron was naught more than ruins now, filled to the brim with blight, and Varian had refused to dismantle the Horde after Garrosh’s defeat. It would be incredibly easy for her to run out and tell Anduin that Sylvanas had fled. She didn’t even have to leave in the fact that she had allowed the escape.

But there had been something in the banshee’s voice that was… sad. Tired. _ Defeated_. Something that made Jaina certain that if she had attacked her, Sylvanas wouldn’t have put up much, if any, of a fight. Something that told Jaina that she desperately needed rest, and did not want to return to that hell she had seen a few years prior. Something that made Jaina.... not glad that she had let Sylvanas live another day, but certainly not upset with that decision. Content, perhaps.

She dared not dwell any longer. How she’d managed this much time alone was beyond her, but Jaina knew well how much Anduin needlessly worried about her. That, combined with Genn and Tyrande’s hatred of Sylvanas, would make the Alliance all the more eager to storm the gates of Orgrimmar for the second time in three years, and Jaina simply couldn’t risk yet _ another _ war breaking out between the factions. Though she despised the Horde like no other, Anduin was only eighteen; far too young to deal with this brutality once again. He deserved to learn firsthand of the amicable parts of being High King. The boring meetings, the endless diplomatic speeches, and the peace of mind that came with being close friends with the man who would most likely serve as the next Warchief.

Jaina turned, hesitated, and left the throne room.

She carefully stepped over Nathanos’s limp remains and over countless other bodies, only stopping when she’d reached the door outside. After a moment of pondering, the mage turned, her eyes immediately falling on the nearest Forsaken corpse. The woman was smaller and bonier than most, with patches of bald decorating her scalp, and clutched a dagger in her right hand. Her face seemed to be frozen in eternal agony, and Jaina briefly wondered if she’d been stuck with that expression in her time as an undead, or if it was simply what was on her face when Sylvanas had shot her clean through the heart. 

It mattered not. Jaina clutched her staff tighter and murmured an incantation. With a disinterested wave of her hand, the body went up in a controlled flame, one that dared not burn the wooden walls surrounding her. It was only a matter of a minute or two before the body was naught more than ash, and Jaina allowed her spell to end. Expressionless, she scooped a handful of the remains and left Grommash Hold.

She didn’t care to cast yet another concealment spell on herself, both to the surprise of the Alliance leadership waiting just outside of the gates and the Dark Rangers that guarded them. The Rangers, though clearly confused as to how Jaina had managed to get past them and why she looked so grim, didn’t bother to stop and question her as she walked towards the Alliance.

Anduin was the first to approach her, but Genn and Tyrande quickly followed behind him. Alleria and Vereesa stood just a few feet away from the rest, and had Jaina bothered to acknowledge them, she likely would have noticed how they tightly clasped one another’s hands. 

They all remained quiet for a moment, and Jaina knew that she wouldn’t be the first one to speak. It was Genn who finally broke the silence. “What of the banshee?” Though not in his Worgen form, he snarled the last word, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the mere thought of Sylvanas. 

“She’s dead,” Jaina stated simply, the somber expression not budging from her face. That time, she did bother to glance over to the remaining two Windrunner sisters. Alleria, ever the strong, stubborn woman, held herself together well, but Jaina could easily see through the facade. She’d believed her sister to be gone, naturally, overtaken by the banshee she’d been forced to become and no longer the strong and proud Ranger-General she once knew. However, belief and knowledge were two very different things, and the pain that Alleria held cracked her firm demeanor and threatened to shatter her entirely. On the contrary, Vereesa openly showed her sorrow. Her mouth agape, she refused to meet Jaina’s eyes as her own filled to the brim with tears. Though she wasn’t sure if it was out of respect for the youngest sister, or simply because she hated to be the cause of that pain, Jaina looked away.

“She’s… dead?” Anduin repeated. He, too, could not hide the numerous emotions that flashed over his features. Confusion began, his eyebrows knitting together and lips pursing as he attempted to figure out exactly how that had happened. Relief flooded soon afterwards, followed by pity, and finally he settled on a more neutral, yet still concerned expression. His eyes darted across Jaina’s form, hesitating as he looked at her blood-soaked corset and without another word, his hand blazed with the Light’s powers and cupped the bare skin of Jaina’s cheek. Warmth engulfed her being and though secretly Jaina did not need the healing, she allowed herself to shut her eyes and enjoy it nonetheless. It only took a second and soon any cuts, scrapes, or bruises that the mage had managed to accumulate throughout the course of the day no longer accompanied her.

Before Jaina had the chance to thank her adoptive nephew, Genn butted in, stepping closer to the two. “The Lord Admiral is fine, King Wrynn. Clearly the banshee’s powers were no match for her own.” His gaze turned to Jaina. “What happened?”

“It was an ambush,” Jaina said, before she could even think of what to say. Typically, she was a truly terrible liar, and her averting eyes and flushed cheeks made it easy for anyone with their eyesight partially intact to see through her bluff. In this moment, however, the lie just came to her. She almost believed it herself. “She was hiding in the shadows, waiting for someone to come in so she could strike. I tried to plead for her to surrender and hand herself over to the mercy of a court, but she wouldn’t listen. She attacked and screeched. She was already pretty badly wounded, and though what I used was a powerful spell, it only took the one hit to destroy her.”

“And what of the body?” Tyrande didn’t allow any of the rest of the Alliance leadership to take in what Jaina had just said, let alone get a word in as she also stepped closer to the mage. “We can’t simply leave her there. If her damned Valkyr have not already resurrected her, they surely will soon.”

“They won’t get the chance,” Jaina said. She held her clenched fist out to the Night Elf, who regarded it with cautious curiosity, and opened it. The ashes of an unnamed Forsaken soldier blackened her palm and fingers, and a bit spilled between the cracks and blended in with the sand beneath them. “I used a fire spell.”

Unceremoniously, she turned her hand over and allowed the rest of the ashes to fall to the ground beneath her. To her right, Vereesa made a small noise of panic and rushed forward, pushing past her remaining sister in an attempt to catch what she could of Sylvanas’s remains. She didn’t manage to capture a single grain of the ash, though, and was quick to conceal her despair with an air of detachment as she returned to her spot beside Alleria. Everyone else remained silent, looking down at the ash that was now starting to blow away with the desert winds.

Anduin finally broke the silence with the clearing of his throat. “Very well, then,” he said, standing up the slightest bit straighter. “In that case, we must inform the Horde leadership. Jaina and I will speak with the Dark Rangers to find out where they’re meeting and teleport there to speak with them. I’d like the rest of you to either stay here, or return to your homes to rest. It has been a trying day for us all.” With that, he motioned for Jaina to follow him, and set off towards the gates.

The last thing Jaina heard before she walked with him was Alleria’s voice, assuring her youngest sister that they would visit Windrunner Spire soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks mom for beta reading @katzenjammers
> 
> Fun fact: Sylvanas was originally supposed to die at the end of the first chapter, making this a one shot. That would have been less sad than what you're about to read. -xore

_ “No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.” - Julius Caesar _

Though the humid midsummer rain battered down on them, Alleria and Vereesa refused to stop running toward Windrunner Spire. They’d walked the distance of the Dead Scar, from the outskirts of Silvermoon City to the worn down road that led them to their childhood home, and they would be damned if one of Quel’thalas’s infamous odd storms, the kind with warm rain that chilled an elf to the bone once the blazing gusts of wind got a hold of them, would stop their march. After all, they hadn’t gotten any other opportunities to visit, being the incredibly busy women they both were. Not only were they leading the Void Elves and the Silver Covenant, respectively, as well as taking care of their families, but peace negotiations over the past couple of months had proven themselves to be quite the hassle as well. As expected, both the Alliance and the Horde had agreed that Baine was to become the next Warchief, something that Anduin had not bothered hiding his excitement for. The two faction leaders agreed; their first priority was to assist Magni in any way possible in fixing all of the damage done to Azeroth. 

“Anar’belore, what a terrible day we picked!” Alleria muttered, dashing the final few feet to seek shelter beneath the partially collapsed doorway of Windrunner Spire. Her cloak, which had been pulled hastily over her head in an attempt to create a makeshift umbrella, was soaked through, and she pinched it between two fingers to peel it over her ears and off of her head. Her golden locks dripped as well and, much like a dog, she shook her head rapidly in an attempt to dry them off.

The water bombarded Vereesa as she entered a few steps behind her sister and, with a completely unamused expression, wiped her face dry. Her ears flicked as water dripped from her hair down onto them, and she carefully took her hood off and rid herself of her sodden cape. “It’s as if the sun itself is angry,” she murmured. “It refuses to shine, as it knows that another Windrunner has passed.”

“There was nothing left of her within that banshee,” Alleria snapped quickly, as though she’d already had the response prepared. With a huff, she cracked her knuckles, looking for any excuse to fiddle her fingers. It was a bad habit she’d picked up as a child, a telltale sign of anxiety or bluffing. “The Sylvanas that we knew and loved died the moment her body did. Anything left over was just a cruel mockery left in place by the damned Lich King. _ He _ blighted the masses at the Wrathgate. _ He _ slaughtered Liam Greymane. _ He _ destroyed Lordaeron twice over and orchestrated the burning of Teldrassil, using our own sister as a puppet!”

Alleria was hurt, Vereesa knew, and she knew that what her remaining sister had said was not at all true. She hadn’t been the one to approach Sylvanas during the trial of Garrosh, wracked with grief and guilt over the death of her husband. She hadn’t been the one who Sylvanas had held close, hugging her without a second thought the moment she had heard of her beloved’s death. The Lich King was a cruel and manipulative man, naturally, but there was only so much that he could do chained to his throne on top of Icecrown Citadel. And controlling one incredibly strong willed and defiant woman within the legions of scourge he had was very likely the least of his concerns. 

Sylvanas had been changed by her death, no doubt, but she was still the same woman that they had grown up with. Vereesa dared not say that though, painfully aware of how upset Alleria was now that she knew there was absolutely no chance of having her sister back. Instead, she simply offered a nod and opened one of the pouches that hung from her belt, suddenly finding herself glad that she’d had it magically warded against water. Three impossibly thin, sapphire blue candles rested inside, and she pulled them out. “Regardless of when she truly did die, we were never able to have a proper wake in her honor, as she and I did for you. Let us not forget the reason we are here.”

“Of course.” Vereesa had always been the expert amongst her siblings at calming her down. Sylvanas had liked to ramp her up, always amused by her older sister’s annoyance over seemingly mild things, while Lirath had never been quite sure of what to say. Vereesa, ever the quiet, reassuring middle child, was good at giving comforting advice. Wordlessly, Alleria swung open the main door, and immediately grimaced. They’d visited the Spire the previous year, to retake it from the scourge menaces that still haunted the grounds, but it still pained the eldest Windrunner sister to see her childhood home in such a dismal state. 

Small chunks of rubble decorated the floors, along with a thin blanket of dust. The ornate chairs, once used by the sisters as cover during their toy bow and arrow fights and for extra seating when their mother held formal dinners, lay splintered on the ground. The dull, fancy paintings that used to adorn the walls were now ripped, though still in their rusted frames. Bits and pieces of Lirath’s old piano could be found in various corners, its sweet melodies never to be played again. Alleria felt her chest alight with old rage, anewed and ready to be released on the nearest inanimate object before she heard Vereesa screech from the kitchen. “Alleria. Alleria! There’s something moving in here!”

The door of the kitchen was hanging from its hinges, broken with its metal decorations almost unrecognizable due to the rust. Instantly, Alleria reached into the shadowy place with her void magic. She felt something struggle in its grasp, a frantic heartbeat thudding within the void tendrils. She pulled it closer, attempting to see what in the world had startled her sister so, but let it go with a soft huff of a laugh. A dark, furry shape quickly shot between her legs, out into the rain. “It was a rat, Little Moon,” she said. “This place is full of them.” 

“Oh.” Vereesa let out a sigh of relief, her entire body relaxing. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been expecting, or why she hadn’t expected a _ rat _ of all things, but her body deflated with relief. “Of course. I can hear them upstairs too.” Her ears swiveled to the floor above them. Indeed, there was a slight shuffling and scrabbling on the planks of the floor directly above them. Then she frowned. “Alleria, if I may ask… why did you let it go? The void had made you so… rash, almost violent, when I last saw you.” Vereesa received only silence in response as Alleria only watched as the swirls of blue and black retreated back into her hands, and the younger Windrunner continued. “It’s her, isn’t it? She changed you.” 

Clearing her throat, Alleria nodded and answered, a slight blush dusting her cheeks. “Alexstrasza has taught me that all life holds value. And that includes vermin, I suppose. The world likely would be covered with garbage if not for them.” She paused for a moment. “And I’d likely be dead if not for her,” Alleria added, after sighing deeply and unclasping the dragon-shaped brooch that held her cape together. Out of pure habit, she flung the green garment in the general direction of an upturned table. Not long ago, she used to be able to make a precision throw that landed the cape neatly over one of the chairs, but due to the state of the Spire, it instead flopped against a dark wooden table leg before crumpling to the floor. Alleria didn’t bother to pick it up, instead opening her knapsack and taking out two cured sausages, some honey bread (recently made with her wife, following an old Quel’dorei recipe to a tee), and a waterskin filled with a light white wine that she had taken from Wyrmrest Temple. It was a valiant, yet failed attempt to replicate one of the Windrunner sisters’ favourite light meals. 

Vereesa had unearthed two chairs from the demolished kitchen. She was just removing the worst of the dust and smears and placing them on the dry part of the terrace, miraculously still covered with the stone roof that protruded from the house a little. They did not have a decent table, save for the overturned large and cumbersome one in the living room, so Alleria cut the bread on her outspread leather knapsack. Something crunched within the bag and Alleria reached into it. With a scoff, she tossed a scroll onto the ground beside her. “I keep forgetting about this thing. Lor’themar’s permit; a temporary lift of my banishment from Quel’Thalas, to visit this place so I can grieve. Must stay fifty miles away from the Sunwell, else I risk repercussions for _ visiting my childhood home_.” 

Vereesa did not respond to her sarcasm laced words. Instead, the youngest Windrunner sister broke the soft, sweet bread that Alleria gave her in two. After a moment of contemplation, she set the smaller of the two pieces aside and started tearing off shreds of the larger piece to eat. That earned her a raised eyebrow from her older sister. “What are you doing?”

“Saving an offering for your altar upstairs,” Vereesa said, talking around the bread in her mouth. “You may not be dead as we previously thought, but it is still customary at funerals to provide such a thing.” _ And this is a funeral_, she added in her head, but did not say out loud.

There was a pause on her sister’s end as she took in that information. She’d spent one thousand years battling demons on Draenor constantly, with only the company of Turalyon by her side. Almost every moment of her time was spent attempting to survive and those that weren’t were spent with Turalyon as he attempted to salvage what was left of their relationship, a feat that only became harder and harder and tested his patience more and more as the years passed. She’d had such little time to herself, such little time to think of how her absence and presumed death had affected what was left of her dear family.

They ate the rest of their small meals in silence. 

Alleria did not save any bread.

~~~ 

Not another word was spoken between the two until they walked back inside, though that was not done with malice or contempt. Both of the remaining Windrunners simply did not have anything else to say, and were more than happy to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves until they were finished eating. With her offered bread in hand, Vereesa followed her sister inside, only pausing when Alleria gracefully stepped over her fallen cloak to march to the stairs instead. She did not stop walking, the only indication that she knew Vereesa had faltered being a twitch of her ear in her sister’s direction. “Mother isn’t here to tell me to neatly hang it on the rack.”

There was bitterness in her words, likely an attempt to cover her sadness. Though to Vereesa, it was in vain, as she could see right through her sister’s bluff. She chose not to twist the knife and slowly walked to the table, where she scooped the wet cape up and draped it over the surface to dry. There had been so many moments when she, as the ever orderly little sister, had been quick to clean up the messes that Alleria and Sylvanas left behind, such as trails from the front door to their rooms, so their mother would not notice it. After Vereesa had tugged all the creases out of the drying cloak, she leaned her bow against the upturned table and joined Alleria in the walk to the upstairs.

The staircase itself proved to be one of the least safe parts of the Spire. Moss and weeds and the occasional spurt of surprisingly happy grass grew in between the cracked stones, opening the gaps further with their roots and making the entire winding stairwell a hazard. Alleria found out firsthand just how far the rot had gotten when a large chunk of the whitish stone crumbled away beneath her heel. With a hissed curse she grasped at the wall, using a burst of void magic to lift herself into the air so she would not get stuck with her ankle in the newly created hole. 

Vereesa, standing a few steps lower, scanned the rest of the staircase for weak spots. There, a few paces from her, a vine burst from the stones above her head. The marble was only held together by its tendrils, in a precarious balance that she had to be careful not to disturb. Meanwhile, Alleria had chosen to ascent the rest of the staircase to the second floor in a light jog. Vereesa could not help a small smile from slipping onto her lips. Her sister had always been the most reckless out of the Windrunner siblings, though it had been a steep competition between her and Sylvanas sometimes that both of them had been determined to win. Yet the smile was quickly wiped from her face when she heard her eldest sister roughly scream in anguish somewhere on the second floor, the sound being one that rivaled Sylvanas’s screech the last time they’d met. Something shattered with a thunderous crash and she felt a wave of the Void’s sickly energy wash over her. 

“Alleria! Are you alright?” Vereesa took the steps two at a time, only to stop in her tracks when she heard the soft sobbing. It came from Alleria’s bedroom, on the far side of the long hall that curved in a U-shape around the larger rooms on the second floor. When she cautiously approached, avoiding a puddle of water where the rain leaked through the cracked stone walls, she saw that the door of Alleria’s bedroom was nothing more than a singular wooden plank, hanging from the upper hinge, since the lower one and the rest of the door had been demolished by the Scourge. 

There, Alleria was on her knees, crying into her hands. Her shoulders shook harshly from the force of her sobs. Around her laid the remains of the room’s furniture, though there was very little left. The scourge had taken nearly everything that they had gotten their grimy hands on, even going as far as to take the cupboards and the bedframe, most likely to use the wood as fuel for their fires. The only things they had left were the sheets, curtains and the stone furniture in the adjoining bathroom. The Lich King’s forces had no need for comfort. Said sheets were now a rotting pile, hastily stashed away in one of the room’s corners. Much of the space near the window, where Alleria’s desk had once stood, was taken up by the altar that had been placed there when word of her supposed death in Draenor had spread amongst the Quel’dorei. 

The altar now lay in shambles, its gilded curls and dark wooden planks splintered over the floor. Vereesa flinched at the sight, remembering how much time and effort had gone into it, both on her own and Sylvanas’s parts. “Sorry, sorry,” Alleria mumbled, quickly wiping her face dry. “I’m so sorry, Vereesa. I j- just saw that _ thing _and couldn’t… I couldn’t -” 

“It’s okay, Lady Sun,” Vereesa murmured, kneeling down beside her sister and wrapping her arms securely around her waist. Pressing close to her, she could feel both of their heartbeats thunder within their chests.

“No! I don’t… I don’t deserve this altar.” Jerking her body in an attempt to shrug off Vereesa’s arms, Alleria opened her now reddened eyes and stared bitterly at the remains of her own memorial. “I abandoned you. Sylvanas and I… both of us left you. I did everything in my power to fight those demons in the Outlands, but did so little to make my way back home. Back to Sylvanas. Back to Arator. Back to you. You were right… Little Moon, you were so right.” 

“Alleria…” Vereesa took a shaky breath as one of her hands started to gently rub her sister’s back in a pattern reminiscent of how Alleria had rubbed her own back after her first heartbreak. It was how she’d rubbed her sons’ backs when they awoke in the earliest cracks of the morning, and how she’d rubbed Arator’s back when he cried in longing for the parents he’d only ever seen in his dreams. She could feel her sister relaxing in her arms, her sniffling dying down just a bit until all Vereesa could hear was their breathing and the shuffling about of rats in a room not far from where they knelt. Only after a few moments of that peaceful near silence did Vereesa speak again. “You were fighting for your life and, from what you’ve told me, dealing with a strain on your relationship so hard, not even time could heal it. But you’re back now. You have an amazing wife. You have a son that was always a role model to my own two. And you have me.”

Alleria shuddered, something that Vereesa was _ sure _ she’d never seen her oldest sister do, and pulled back from their embrace. This time, however, she did not do so violently, nor out of dismay. Instead, it was to meet Vereesa’s eyes, her soft blue that were now tinged with the red of tears meeting a deeper blue that was nearly identical in shade to Sylvanas’s now discarded sapphire necklace. Vereesa offered her a smile that she hoped was reassuring. “_Your heart flew straight as any arrow upon the wind, sister. You were the brightest of our Order. You were the most beloved of our kin,_” she recited, her smile turning bittersweet. “Sylvanas wrote that.”

“I know,” Alleria murmured, wiping the remaining tears from her cheeks. “I’ve visited my monument in Stormwind. She was wrong.”

“Alleria…-”

“My heart no longer flies straight.” 

Vereesa blinked, staring at her sister. Both of her older sisters had expressed attraction to women, either in the past or currently, and their jokes about being sapphic had always flown straight over Vereesa’s head. She wondered, briefly, if this was another one of those jokes, or if this was simply Alleria being self-deprecating. She opened her mouth to ask, but was cut off by a snicker. 

“Alexstrasza has them… the poems,” Alleria said, confirming Vereesa’s suspicions about the ancient Kaldorei poet that Alleria and Sylvanas had loved to reference. Seemingly every minute, when they were younger, there had been a remark about Sappho this, Sappho that. Quite frankly, Vereesa had only recently discovered the source of the word. “What she could save from the Sundering, at least. And a small drawing of the drowned Queen. Some say they courted each other.” 

“A bit too much information,” Vereesa sighed, though she was glad that Alleria felt well enough to crack jokes again. Still, she did not need to know rumours about Azshara’s private life. She glanced to the bread that she was still holding before her eyes darted to the smashed altar. Alleria seemed to notice, as her eyes followed suit. 

“Save it,” she murmured, taking Vereesa’s hand in her own. “We came here to honour the death of Sylvanas, so many years after it occurred. She was a hero of the Quel’dorei, and the only reason that any high or blood elves still stand today. Regardless of her horrid deeds in the afterlife, we must honour who she was when still alive.” Alleria received only a nod in response from her younger sister and she stood, urging Vereesa to do so with her. “Traditionally, an altar for a deceased family member contains a worldly possession that they cared greatly for, like Minn’da’s hunting bow or Lirath’s first lute. What would Sylvanas want at her altar?”

Vereesa was silent for a moment as she thought. Though she had spent so much time during her childhood in Sylvanas’s room, as the two middle sisters and moons of the family shared a bond that no other understood, she couldn’t seem to pick out one object over the rest of them that Sylvanas had cherished. “Perhaps we should go to her room,” she finally said. “We can see if the Scourge left anything of value before we decide on something.”

“I doubt we will find anything,” Alleria murmured, sparing one final glance around her own room before she followed Vereesa to Sylvanas’s. “Arthas’s minions truly did everything in their power to clear out the poor Spire.”

“I don’t know where else we would find something,” Vereesa admitted, avoiding a part of the floor that looked less than stable. “Everything of value in the lower levels was taken, but perhaps they left something upstairs. Some of the arcane wards were still in place, the last time we visited.”

The words _ last time we visited _ left a sour taste in Alleria’s mouth. Last time, when Sylvanas had still been as alive as she could be, as snide as she used to be in her bad moods and when Alleria had seen how horrid she had become. Before she could fully sink away into her morose thoughts, they had reached Sylvanas’s room and Vereesa yelped. “Alleria!” she called out, despite being on a few steps away from her eldest sister. “I swear I heard something moving in there.” She pointed to the door before them, that had long since been decorated with lavish golden curls that were embedded deep into the dark wood. Despite the damage done to it, the Thalassian inscription was still visible in the middle of the door.

_ Sylvanas Windrunner, Lady Moon _

Though she’d been expecting them, the words stung Alleria like an arrow to the chest. She took a deep breath to steady herself, and found that Vereesa was doing the same. “I told you, this place is full of vermin. Maybe they’ve eaten Sylvanas’s old clothes and made a nest out of them.” Alleria scoffed and cracked her knuckles. “She would have thrown a fit.”

“Of course,” Vereesa murmured, trying to alleviate the tension that had already worked its way back between the two. She recognized her sister’s bluff instantly. In fact, she had seen it ever since they had arrived in Quel’thalas. The insistent fiddling with her fingers, cracking her knuckles, rubbing over the red, dragon-shaped clasp of her cloak. All signs that her air of confidence and snark was fake as could be. It was a pattern she’d noticed since they were children, still too young to yield bows, but she didn’t dare tell her sister that. There was a shred of poorly concealed anger as Alleria kicked the door to Sylvanas’s room when it wouldn’t open at a soft push. A cloud of dust billowed into the hallway, making Vereesa cough and cover her mouth with a hand to avoid getting dust between her teeth.

She walked the last few steps up to Sylvanas’s room and bumped into Alleria, who was standing still in the doorway. Her softly glowing sky blue eyes were wide and her eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the opposite end of the room. “The curtains are closed,” she whispered, before Vereesa had a chance to ask what was wrong. “I could have sworn that they were open last time.”

“The undead are rather fond of dark places, especially the banshees we fought when last we visited.” Suddenly overcome by the urge to see the interior for herself, Vereesa laid her hand on her sister’s gently, as to not startle her, and removed it from the door frame. She hesitated. “Come to think of it, we haven’t seen any Scourge since we arrived.”

Alleria, seemingly frozen in place until that moment, snapped out of her trance to spare a glance at her sister. “The Void’s powers tend to scare them off. I’m frankly surprised that we encountered as many as we did last year.” Vereesa, seemingly satisfied with that answer, stepped around her to make her way into the room.

Unlike the ravaged lower floor, the only thing that seemed to have been disturbed in Sylvanas’s room was the closet. It had a huge rip in the door, as if something had torn into the dark wood with four long, sharp claws. The vast, queen-sized bed was still entirely intact, though it was coated with a thick layer of dust. Three of the four fluffy white pillows that Sylvanas had tended to hoard laid neatly arranged by the headboard. A soft smile found its way onto Vereesa’s lips. Even when she had been the Ranger-General of Quel’thalas, Sylvanas always insisted on sleeping with the largest and softest pillows that she could possibly find. It had come, naturally, with far too much teasing from her siblings, but none of the Windrunners could possibly deny that Sylvanas’s bed was the coziest one in the entire house. Always the one chosen for sleepovers. Memories of the nights they’d spent as a pile of young elves in this bed, telling one another stories and messing around until it was much too late, welled up in Vereesa’s mind and threatened to bring her to tears. How long had it been since Sylvanas had held her tight and cuddled her until she fell asleep? She could almost feel her sister’s ears twitching and tickling her cheeks. 

Her reminiscing was abruptly cut off, however, when she realized that the fourth pillow was missing. What had become of it?

_ Probably destroyed_, she thought, _ when those damned Scourge invaded. _ Shaking off those thoughts, Vereesa instead focused on continuing to studying her sister’s room. The red silken covers were folded to reveal a small strip of the white sheets below. 

As she sat down on the edge of the bed, she traced the embroidery on the covers with a careful hand. It had been a present from their mother, given to Sylvanas when she had been sworn in as ranger. A beautiful forest scene, with hawkstriders in brilliant gold, deer in soft copper and as centerpiece a large tree, sprawled over the bed. On one hand, Vereesa wanted to roll it up to put into the grave, as it was the closest she could get to having an actual body to bury, but disturbing the relative peace of the room seemed like doing her sister wrong.

Alleria was still standing in the door opening, but she walked over to where Vereesa sat and carefully seated herself on the bed too. “Do you remember…” she started, with the first semblance of real grief that Vereesa had heard in her voice ever since their conversation in front of Orgrimmar. She huffed out a soft sigh, attempting to compose herself. “Do you remember the times when we used to hang these sheets between the posts of the bed?” Gesturing to the four pillars that held up the lofty canopy of the bed, Alleria continued. “We’d wait until Sylvanas had gone hunting, then we made a fort out of the bed and shot cloth-tipped arrows at her when she returned here. You were very young still, do you remember that?”

The memories weren’t very clear to Vereesa, but she did remember the numerous times that Alleria and her had hidden in various locations in the Spire to play pranks on Sylvanas. They’d even taught Lirath a few, when he was old enough to learn. “Wasn’t that… Didn’t I hit her in the groin with one of those soft arrows once? And then she jumped on top of the bed and you grabbed her ears to avoid having me squashed beneath her?” 

“Exactly,” Alleria said with a sad chuckle. “Then I got an extremely sharp elbow in my ribs for the trouble.”

They sat on the bed for some time, in silence, looking around in the room and listening to the rain beating on the stones of the Spire. Everywhere Vereesa looked, she saw objects that they could theoretically take with them to bury in the place of Sylvanas’s body. A cup with runes that kept a beverage warm, bought at a stand during Midsummer Fire Festival in Silvermoon City. A delicately woven leather bracelet, given to Sylvanas by one of her fellow ranger cadets. Her trainee’s bow that she had mounted on the wall as a memory. It remained undecorated, made of simple wood and leather. Yet all those items seemed to be perfectly placed, as if Sylvanas could walk into the room at any given moment and demand that her sisters get off her bed before throwing herself face down onto the covers. Displacing anything would ruin the integrity of the room.

She said so to Alleria, who simply shrugged. “No one will mind it if we take anything.” The statement, though short and seemingly sweet, made Vereesa purse her lips as she tried to hide her pain. Not long ago, someone _ would _ have been incredibly upset with them for stealing something from the room. There was no use dwelling on that thought any longer, though, so she stood up and walked to the closet. Perhaps they could get something from there, since it wouldn’t disturb the lingering feeling of home and of childhood that the chamber still held. Since the door was broken and hanging half out of its hinges, Vereesa could see the planks of the back of the closet and the horizontal series of hooks within. No clothes hung from them, but maybe there would be some inside that had fallen to the floor in all the time that the Spire had been abandoned. She opened the heavy door, having to scoot it out from where it rested just a bit, before peering into the dark interior of the rather sizeable closet.

Something hissed at her; a violent, hoarse sound that came from one of the closet’s corners.

In an instant, Vereesa flinched back, instinctively reaching for a bow that she had left downstairs. Her eyes flicked to the blackness inside the closet, scanning it. Then she saw them. The two red eyes that glared at her from the dark. She froze in fear, unable to do anything but stare back with wide eyes. The creature inside blinked, then moved, scraping over the planks with claws, feet or something similar. Another hiss rolled from its throat.

“A-Alleria!” Vereesa warned. “There’s - there is something in the- _ aah! _” 

With a sudden movement, the creature surged forward, pushing Vereesa aside. As her back sharply collided with one of the bedposts, it emerged from the closet and crouched in front of it for a brief moment before bolting to the doorway. It spared only a quick glance to where the door had fallen and ungracefully stumbled over it. It fell to the ground, and it was then that Vereesa saw her.

Her face resembled a skull more than a fully formed head. Her purple-grey skin looked paper-thin, stretched over far too prominent cheekbones, with dried, flaking lips and sunken ruby eyes. When she jerked her head, the light fell over her face, revealing a gash on the left cheek that exposed her sharp, and clearly fractured, cheekbone. At the movement, a plume of black smoke rose from her flesh, sliding down her neck before sinking into her body again. She still wore some of her armour, though it was torn and seemed ravaged, with numerous rips and holes. Dried blood caked most of her body and the parts that were not constantly fading into her banshee form vanished and formed from smoke time and time again.

Sylvanas had her gloves on still, one clenched tightly into a fist while the other rested on the floor to support her weakened form. She had only one boot, the other missing to reveal an emaciated grey foot with yellow, claw-like nails. Her hair was naught more than a wild tangle, matted with blood, and where her ears stuck out from, they pressed flat against her skull.

Harshly breathing, Vereesa reached out towards her sister’s starved form with a trembling pale hand. “_S-Sylvanas _ -”

“No!” Alleria cried out as Sylvanas lunged in the general direction of the bed. She called the void into her hands, restraining Sylvanas in her magic’s grasp. The undead began struggling wildly, snarling and screeching in pain as it bit into her skin. Her shape began unravelling into oily smoke, spreading over the floor and wrestling herself out of the void tendrils’ grasp.

She opened her mouth wide in a horrifying, gaping hole, smoke pouring out between her fangs as she wailed. On instinct, both sisters clamped their hands over their ears to shield themselves against the sound, yet this wail was but a meek version of what they had heard when retaking their home. Still, it was enough for Alleria to drop Sylvanas completely. At once, she took off, speeding in the direction of the hallway. When she righted herself up and banged into the closet in her haste, she suddenly slipped and kicked a crimson object away from where she had stepped on it. The fourth pillow, now stained with blood, had fallen out of the closet when she had emerged from. Sylvanas rushed for the stairwell, her sisters in hot pursuit.

With Vereesa right on her tail, Sylvanas was uncoordinated, making only harsh movements. She crashed into the wall, briefly melting into her banshee form before staggering towards the staircase. There, she stumbled over her own feet, slipping over the floor and falling down the first half of the stairs. Her arms wildly grasped around her, scratching over the stone walls with the claws of her gloves and dropping something with a metallic _ clunk _ onto the stairs. Where her head had collided with the wall, Vereesa could see, to her horror, a smear of blood on the white marble. She jumped down the stairs, avoiding the gaps and cracks with a grace and ease that came with being an elf.

“Sylvanas! Please, hold still. Let us help-” Vereesa’s breath died in her throat as she saw her sister in the ruined passageway to the terrace. Fresh blood oozed from her wounds, now prominent in the bleak daylight. Despite the months between the ceasefire at Orgrimmar and this day, they had not healed. Sylvanas snarled and Vereesa flinched. It was nothing like Sylvanas’s voice. Not her voice before her undeath, not her angry sneer, not her commanding Ranger-General voice and not even her banshee’s cry. An animalistic growl tore from her throat, before she doubled over and spat blood onto the tiles of the ground level room. Her entire form was shaking, it was as if she could barely remain standing. She groaned, the sound pathetic, as the blood dripped from her mouth. Then she turned to the blazing storm outside and Vereesa got a glance at the horrific wound in her back, so deep that she could see the white of her spine.

She stepped forward once more, desperate to do _ something _to aid her sister, to dim her pain. Carefully reaching out, she slowly bent her knees, to lower her stature so she would not frighten Sylvanas. Truthfully, she did not wholly know how much of her sister still resided in Sylvanas’s new wild shape, or how much of her mind was still intact. Ever so slowly she approached, catching her sister’s sunken red eyes with her own teary blue ones. Sylvanas drew up her lip in a snarl, making a new stream of blood trickle from the wound that split her lips.

“Be careful, Sylvanas,” Vereesa soothed. She took another slow step forward, brushing the tips of her fingers against Sylvanas’s left leather bracer. Even with her touch as light as she could make it, Vereesa could still feel her older sister trembling when she touched her armour. As she followed the split of her facial wound upwards with her eyes, Vereesa saw to her horror that half of Sylvanas’s face suddenly melted into smoke while the other half screwed up in a silent scream. She moved to grasp Sylvanas’s arm more firmly, but the banshee drew it away in a hurried movement. 

For a long few seconds, they stared at each other. A small, comforting smile found its way onto Vereesa’s pale lips as she opened her hand and offered it to Sylvanas, palm upwards. While Sylvanas herself did not reach for it, a few wayward tendrils of smoke, sprouting from her armour, slowly drifted in Vereesa’s direction. A wave of relief rushed through the youngest sister. Perhaps Sylvanas _ was _in there after all. She was trapped and clearly scared, and all she needed was for someone to care for her and help her. 

Vereesa was more than willing to be that person. She waited patiently, the few seconds they spent standing just a mere two feet from one another feeling like hours as Sylvanas let down one of the many walls that guarded her. Then Alleria barreled down the stairs, her bow in hand and an arrow drawn, and Sylvanas hissed violently. At once, she recoiled, stumbling out into the rain and disappearing in the grey streaks of the storm and the surrounding forest before either one of her sisters could catch up with her.

There was a moment’s silence, and then another as Vereesa and Alleria stared at the door that Sylvanas had fled from. Slowly, Alleria’s bow lowered, and she returned her arrow to its quiver. 

“Did you have to scare her off?” Vereesa bit. What would most likely be their only chance at helping Sylvanas had just slipped through their fingers and she felt the fury rise in her chest. “Alleria? Stop standing there and just… gaping at the storm! She’s gone now, I could nearly touch her - no, I had my hand on her arm - and you had to come downstairs with your weapon in hand?”

When Alleria still did not answer, yet her eyes slowly filled with dark blue and more inky lines started spreading over her skin, starting where the tattoo crossed her eye, Vereesa stepped forward. Yet before she reached her sister, her eyes spotted a glint in between the cracked stone of the staircase’s steps. Darting forward, she fell on her knees on the broken marble stairs once she saw what laid there. Sylvanas had scratched shallow gouges into the wall when she had fallen, her legs unable to support her withered body as she had desperately she clawed around herself for a brace. In doing so, she had dropped what she had been holding in her clenched hand.

The necklaces that the sisters had discarded, the last time they had met. Somehow, Sylvanas had collected them from the stone arc where they had been dropped. She had tied them together, her own blue gem in the middle of the adjoining red and green ones. Vereesa’s eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the necklaces and, for the first time that day, the tears that had filled her eyes finally fell. She no longer attempted to hold them back, instead savoring the feeling of hot paths in the dust on her cheeks as her shoulders shook with the force of her sobs. “Alleria - ” she quietly murmured, holding out the necklaces. “Sylvanas… she dropped this.”

Alleria still stood in the middle of the room, hand tightly clenched around her bow. She did not pay attention to the jewels, not even reacting with as much as a nod as she continued to stare out into the storm. “Vereesa, our sister is alive.” Her tone was dark, far more so than Vereesa had heard in ages.

“Y-yes, I _ saw _that. And you scared her away, otherwise we might have-”

“She is _ alive. _ ” Alleria turned to her sister, hardly caring that she’d been speaking. The Void had faded from her eyes but the fury made them shine brightly. “Jaina Proudmoore said that she _ burnt _ the body.” 

“P-Perhaps she recovered herself from the ashes? This was her banshee form, and -”

Alleria angrily cut her off. “No, it wasn’t. Banshee’s aren’t solid. They don’t crash into walls and they don’t bleed. Besides, don’t you think someone would have seen it, if she dragged herself out of Orgrimmar’s mud?” Alleria turned to face the storm again, regarding the blood that Sylvanas had left on the ground with a look of utter disgust. “Vereesa, think; Jaina isn’t a fool. Sylvanas, in the state as we just saw her, could not have evaded her. We heard that the Forsaken turned on her and stabbed her nearly to death. At least, that is what the King and Jaina said on the council.”

Starting to pace in front of the doorway to the terrace, the eldest Windrunner sister frowned deeply. Her mouth twitched and her long eyebrows furrowed as she took her time to put all of her thoughts in order. On her part, Vereesa nervously twiddled with the entwined necklaces in her hand. She eventually cleared her throat and spoke up. “Alleria… we should go to Jaina. Perhaps she could aid us.”

Her sister nodded with a somewhat relieved breath. “Yes. We can confront her and report to King Wrynn. Perhaps even convince him to lend us soldiers so we can snuff her out.” 

The anguished shriek of “no!” was out of Vereesa’s mouth before she was aware of it. Clenching the necklaces tighter into her fist, she wanted to interject that they should help their sister, not kill her. She wanted to say that Sylvanas seemed scared of them more than anything else, that there had been no violence except for the brief moment that they had startled her. And on top of all else, that they had a new chance to make their family whole again. Alleria’s face seemed as if set in stone, however, and Vereesa knew that there was no direct way she could change her mind. It had always been like that, even when they were very young. If Alleria Windrunner had a goal in mind, only slow coaxing over the span of hours could even partially dissuade her. Perhaps, Vereesa thought, she would stand a chance if Jaina helped.

“I understand that you might not wish to see it,” Alleria said, with a hint of concern in her voice. “You could always stay behind in… in Dalaran, or in Stormwind, when I lead the hunt.”

_ The hunt. _ As if Sylvanas was an animal that needed to be hunted down. Again, Vereesa reminded herself of the fact that Alleria had no hope left that there was anything of their sister that they could still save. Yet she did not want to let go of her last glimmer of hope. What she had seen in Sylvanas’s eyes was no wild creature. It had only been a frightened, injured, panicked gaze. In hopes of being able to persuade Alleria with the help of Jaina, Vereesa simply stayed quiet and nodded as her sister called the void into her hands and tore a portal into the air. Through it she could see glimpses of an alley that led to a plaza in what she assumed to be Boralus. The wind, calmer than the storm that battered the Spire, carried the salty Kul Tiran air through the portal, allowing it to waft into the damp and stale air of Windrunner Spire. Vereesa allowed herself a moment of calm, enjoying the fresh breeze on her skin.

One after another, they stepped through the portal. Alleria closed it behind her and took a deep breath of air. Carefully, they snuck out of the alley, onto the plaza. Proudmoore Keep loomed over the city from where the dark, square building stood on its hill. Though many of the small windows were darkened, Vereesa could see some where light filtered through. She wondered which one housed Jaina.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such a nice sisterly reunion, innit? -brazenedMinstrel
> 
> Thalassian:
> 
> Minn'da = mother


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW in this chapter for some pretty gross imagery.
> 
> Ty mom we love you <3 -xore
> 
> nom -brazenedMinstrel

_ “The die is cast.” - Julius Caesar _

_ “Vereesa… Vereesa!” _

_ Something poked her cheek, pushing slowly and deeply into her soft skin until it couldn’t go any further. _

_ “Open your eyes, Little Moon.” _

_ The second youngest Windrunner sibling did just that. Slowly, she awoke, blearily gazing at the intricate floral woodwork of the canopy above her bed. Something moved in the corner of her eye, and Vereesa glanced over to see Sylvanas. Her sister sat on her knees, a wide grin coating her lips. “Mhmm… Sylvanas?” she sleepily murmured. “How did you get in here?” Typically she could hear if anyone opened her bedroom’s door, as the ears of elven children were often the first parts that fully grew. _

_ Sylvanas smiled even wider, revealing the tips of her sharp fangs. She nodded towards the open window, where a soft breeze wafted into the room, making the brass sun-and-stars toys that hung from the ceiling of the bed with silken threads tingle and shimmer. _

_ “Minn’da said that you’re not allowed to climb the vines!” Vereesa gasped, only intensifying her sister’s cheeky grin. _

_ “And if we’re quick enough, she won’t even notice that I have. Come on! I want to show you something really cool.” _

_ Typically, Vereesa was more than happy to go along with whatever one of her sisters had planned. She wasn’t the type to run off on adventures on her own, and Alleria and Sylvanas more often than not had great ideas. But she couldn’t make it through the day without her mid-afternoon nap, at the risk of falling asleep during dinner and not being able to sleep through the night. So in response, Vereesa simply pouted and crawled underneath the blankets until only her twitching ears were visible. “I’d rather sleep some more,” she murmured, her voice muffled by the thick quilt. Though she could sometimes display a healthy desire to become a ranger and had all of the admiration of her older sisters that a nine year-old could have, she was by far the laziest child in the family. Their mother often joked that even Lirath slept less than she did. _

_ Sylvanas shifted and stood from the bed, the leathers of her armour creaking as she did. For a moment, Vereesa feared that she would pull the blankets right off of her. Instead, after a moment of intense silence, she jolted when Sylvanas’s breath tickled her ear as her sister whispered: “You’re going to be a ranger, not a burrowing mole. I want to show you a beautiful hunting spot. And if we catch anything, you can have it for lunch.” _

_ Very carefully, Vereesa lifted a slip of the blanket and peeked out with a single big blue eye. “Can I sit on your shoulders?” _

_ Their faces mere inches apart, Sylvanas glanced down to her. She raised a single wispy eyebrow. “Sure.” _

_ “And do I get sweet buns?” _

_ Rolling her eyes, Lady Moon nodded. “Yes, you will get sweet buns.” _

_ And so, Vereesa was washed up and dressed within five minutes. _

_ Hanging onto Sylvanas’s back, she watched with curious eyes as they climbed down the tough vines that hugged the south wall of the Spire. Though Lireesa Windrunner had mentioned many times over the years of hiring a botanist to get rid of them - and had even made several attempts to do so - the plant proved to be a pest that did not respond to toxins or arcane. That was just as well though, as, despite their mother’s hatred of it, it bore very pretty dark purple flowers in summer that the sisters loved to wear in their hair. It was Sylvanas’s favoured way of getting to her sisters’ bedrooms in the early or late hours, accessing the library, and escaping her mother’s calls for help with chores. Today, though, it seemed that her luck had run out. _

“Sylvanas Windrunner!”_ The Ranger-General’s commanding voice rang out over the dewy fields surrounding the building, causing Sylvanas to pause as she made her way down the Spire. “What did I say about climbing those sun-forsaken vines?” _

_ “They can’t be sun-forsaken, they bathe in it all day!” Vereesa called out from her position on her sister’s back. Sylvanas snickered, causing Vereesa to hold onto her shoulders tighter so she wouldn’t fall as they softly shook. _

_ Their mother, emerging from the house in nothing but boots and an orange robe, turned as red as King Anasterian’s ballroom cloak. “If you do not get down here this instant, with Vereesa intact, I will make you assist the cooks with doing the dishes and cooking the bones for broth for the entire summer!” _

_ “Whatever you wish, mother!” With a wide, almost evil grin, Sylvanas chose that moment to take a leap of faith. Both of her hands grasped Vereesa’s legs, to assure that her younger sister would not fall off of her back as she jumped the remaining few meters to the ground. Almost miraculously, she managed to land on her feet, having to bend her knees to soften the blow of the landing. Clenching her legs tightly around her back, Vereesa squealed with joy as they took off into the woods. After a few minutes of fevered running, the Moons stopped. Panting harshly, Sylvanas knelt so Vereesa could slip off her back. “I think we’ve outrun her,” she gasped. _

_ “You cannot outrun Minn’da. She wasn’t going to chase us in her morning robe anyways.” Her little sister pouted anew, chewing on her bottom lip. “Do you think she’ll be mad?” _

_ “Not if we bring her dinner.” Cleaning the dirt off her clothing and wiping her hands on her leathers, Sylvanas cleared her throat. “C’mon, hop back on my shoulders. I’ll show you the place. It’s a little way down the road, and then we go off the path a bit, and then up a hill.” She grasped Vereesa under her armpits and swung her into the air, settling the little elf on her shoulders as if she weighed naught more than a feather. Then she walked up to a large tree, reaching into a hollow and pulling out both her bow and a quiver full of arrows that she’d stashed in their during one of her first times hunting. _

_ Her quiver was strapped to her back, and her bow given to Vereesa to inspect and play with as they started down the cobbled road. They remained silent for a few minutes, the only sounds being the rustle of trees from the light breeze, the chirping of faraway birds, and Vereesa’s occasional yawns. It didn’t take long for Sylvanas to get rather restless. Now would be as good a time as any to test her sister’s budding ranger skills. “The grass is all dry and crunchy. Do you know what that means, Little Moon?” She asked, reminding herself to remain patient. Vereesa did not have nearly the training that she and Alleria did. _

_ The youngest Windrunner sister drummed her fingers on the top of Sylvanas’s head with the hand that was not still holding her simple wooden bow. “That you can’t sneak around in it?” _

_ “That too, but it’s not exactly what I meant. And you can, it’s just more difficult. If you roll your sole all the way down when you take a step and all the way up when you take another, not lifting or putting it down all at once, you can move soundlessly in dry grass too.” _

_ “Hm.” There was a pause as Vereesa thought for a moment. “That… that it’s the dry season?” She slung the bow over her back in favor of grasping her sister’s ears like the reins of a horse. A tug that was perhaps a bit too harshly pulled a small wince out of Sylvanas, though Vereesa hardly seemed to notice. _

_ “No, Little Moon, that is _ why _ the grass is so dry, not the result of it. I’ll show you.” Kneeling down, Lady Moon picked a few blades of grass from the side of the road and held them up high for her sister to see. “Look, do you see these pods? There are seeds in them. See how the leaves peel back a bit?” _

_ “Yeah!” Vereesa cooed, reaching for the grass and throwing her weight forward so her older sister very nearly fell. _

_ With a slight grunt, Sylvanas steadied herself before she spoke once more. “Well, in the wet season they’re still green. Now they’re all brown-yellow and completely dried out. And when something walks through the grass - ” _

_ “Like a deer we can hunt for lunch?” _

_ “Or a small noisy elf, yes. When the grass is shaken, the seeds fall out, like this.” Rattling the grass between her fingers, Sylvanas shook out the small brown seeds, before throwing the plant next to her onto the road and walking on. “If the grass wasn’t dried out, the leaves wouldn’t peel back and the seeds wouldn’t fall out. So there would be no new grass in the wet season when the rains come. And that is something all rangers should know. You too, Little Moon.” _

_ “I’m not a ranger yet…” The pout was clear in Vereesa’s voice, and she allowed her chin to rest upon the top of Sylvanas’s head. “And the rains scare me.” _

_ “Nah, you’re just afraid of those summer storms with all the thunder.” _

_ After humming in agreement, Vereesa stayed quiet for the rest of the walk, instead watching the reds, yellows, and browns of the forest and the blue sky above them. She always loved to snuggle with her sisters while the storms howled around the Spire and everything seemed ready to collapse. It never did, though. The Windrunner’s homestead would always survive the storm. _

_ It took less time than Vereesa expected for them to stray off the path, and they soon arrived at a few large hills just southwest of the Farstrider Retreat. If she squinted, Vereesa could even make out the brilliant reds and golds that adorned the building. But she didn’t focus on that for long, as Sylvanas set her down on the ground and led her up one of the more gentle slopes of the hillside. “We’ll come back here in a little while, but this is the _ perfect _ hunting spot. Look.” She pointed down the rockier slopes of the hill to the forest floor beneath them. “If you stay really quiet and really still for a while, the deer and rabbits will come out. Then you have the perfect advantage to shoot down at them. One time, I even shot three before the rest ran away!” _

_ “Three!?” Vereesa gaped up at her, and Sylvanas grinned all too proudly down at her and nodded. _

_ “Three. Two deer and one rabbit.” She paused for a moment. “You were too little to remember.” _

_ “Oh. Okay.” Vereesa shrugged and took one last look around before Sylvanas took her hand and led her off once more. The other side of the hill was slightly steeper, and Sylvanas gleefully jumped from rock to rock on her way down as Vereesa took her time, being as careful as possible. On this side, the trees became sparser and the forest opened itself to reveal even more houses across a wide, crystal clear river. Already Vereesa found herself excited to dive into it and splash around with her sister, but Sylvanas turned slightly and Vereesa nearly groaned with disappointment as they instead walked south. Here the trees were bushes, lacking any trunks, and in their midst a clearing with dried mud broke up the grass. A lake, Vereesa realized, since it had a small puddle of brownish water in the middle. A very dry lake, though, since it was a rather severe dry season. After wandering by the cracked mud for a minute or two, Vereesa hobbled back over to her sister, who had set her bow aside and was kneeling down in another spot in the mud. _

_ “Why did you want to show me _ this _ place?” Vereesa asked, not bothering to conceal the disappointment that seemed to drip from every word. _

_ “It’s the only waterhole within five miles of the Spire, not counting the wells they dug for the people of the village last autumn. All the wildlife in the area will sooner try drinking some of the water that’s left here than go near the wells. Or the river, since it’s full of noisy boats coming from Gods know where nowadays.” Softly laughing, Sylvanas patted the crusty mud of the evaporated lake. “Besides… come here, I’ll show you something funny.” _

_ Sitting down next to her sister, Vereesa drew up a curious eyebrow as Sylvanas kept patting the mud. “Put your hand on it, Little Moon, you can feel them moving.” _

_ With a short but loud screech, Vereesa skittered away from the lakeside. “What?!” _

_ “I think there might be a layer of water underneath the mud. There’s animals in it.” Seeing her little sister’s disgust, Sylvanas broke into a fully-fledged laugh. She discarded both of her leather gloves, throwing them into the grass beside her. “Look,” she said while breaking the thin crust of mud and reaching into the sludge with her bare hand, not stopping until her arm was submerged up to the elbow within the remains of the lake. After a moment, she sharply pulled upwards, dragging a squirming brown creature with her. _

_ “Ew!! What is that?” Vereesa yelled as the thing flung chunks of mud at the both of them. _

_ “I think it’s a giant salamander!” Sylvanas proudly held up her catch, securing it in both of her hands. The brownish amphibian fought to free itself for a few more moments before stilling and sluggishly blinking with its small black eyes. It was as long Sylvanas’s lower arm, with a wide, toothless mouth and a thick tail. “There are more of them in the lakebed, waiting until the rains come. I think I could feel six or seven of them! And then, when the lake fills up again, they’ll swim out and you can hear them singing from the terrace.” _

_ “Salamanders sing?” Vereesa inched closer, poking into its side with a careful finger. “Ew, it’s slimy.” _

_ “Of course it’s slimy, it lives in the mud. And yes, they sing.That’s what they taught me during my ranger’s training. It’s a good way to find water in the evenings of the wet season.” While the creature protested with more squirming and a loud hiss, Sylvanas managed to flip it around so its spotted belly was turned to her. “Though they do make noise now. Listen, I’ll make it say something.” _

_ Vereesa still did not want to come very close to it, but she leaned forward anyway when her sister rubbed over the amphibian’s belly. It began to croak low in it’s throat, flicking its tail from side to side and once more struggling to get out of Sylvanas’s hands. The sound threw Vereesa into a fit of giggles. “It sounds like Alleria when she’s snoring!” she exclaimed. _

_ Sylvanas started giggling as well, due to both Vereesa’s joke and the little snorts her sister let out as she laughed. “It does! Maybe we should get a bucket so we can bring it home and show it to her. She’ll love that. Perhaps we could convince mom to get an aquarium and - gaahh!” Sylvanas’s laughter was cut off by a yelp as the salamander suddenly wriggled out of her hands, slapped a muddy tail into her face, and dove back into the mud. She looked on as it made its way into the hole that she had dug, and the two sisters remained silent for a few moments before Sylvanas heaved out a sigh. “Well, so much for a new pet.” _

_ “It doesn’t love you,” Vereesa solemnly stated, shaking her head. _

_ “But you do.” _

_ “Of course! But not when you have mud on your hands, that’s gross.” _

_ With a wide grin, Sylvanas wiggled her fingers and, before her younger sister could react, pounced forward and tackled her. Vereesa let out a loud screech as Sylvanas sat on her, burying her hands deep into the mud that surrounded them only to pull them back out and hastily wiping them on Vereesa’s cheeks. Little hands attempted to push her away to no avail, and after only a few moments, Vereesa herself instead dug into the mud as well and flung it up at her sister. _

_ When her first throw landed right in Sylvanas’s fine blonde hair, she immediately jumped off of Vereesa and took small, quick steps back. “Truce!” She called, holding her hands up and allowing any remaining mud to fall back to the ground. Vereesa got up as well, wiping mud off of her face. She did naught more than smear it, though, as her hands were still caked in mud as well. _

_ “Truce,” she agreed, dropping her handfuls as well. She shook her hands wildly in an attempt to get any remaining grime off of them, but didn’t manage to do much. “Can we go back to that hunting spot on the hill?” _

_ Sylvanas nodded and scooped Vereesa up, not bothering to lift her up onto her shoulders as she retrieved her bow from where Vereesa had dropped it. With her sister in one hand and bow in the other, she set back towards the hill as Vereesa started drawing patterns in the mud that still coated her cheeks. “What are you drawing?” She murmured as they reached the base of the gentler slope of the hill. _

_ “You and me and Alleria and Lirath. ‘Cept you and me have moons for heads and Alleria and Lirath have suns for heads.” She poked deep into the mud twice, right on the underside of Sylvanas’s cheekbone, then drew a smile beneath it. _

_ To humor her, Sylvanas didn’t set her sister down until she seemed content with her pictures. “Alleria knows about this spot,” she said, glancing around the small clearing. There were only a few trees, one of which had her name carved low on the trunk. She pointed to that one. “That’s my favorite to sit against when I’ve been out here all day. You can still see almost everything from there.” _

_ As Vereesa practically skipped over to the tree and sat against it, Sylvanas allowed her bow and quiver to rest against the other tree nearby before laying down on the forest ground. She wasn’t able to see anything aside from the sky and the leaves from there, but hardly cared. The grass was far too comfortable, and they had plenty of time to catch dinner. _

_ Few words were spoken between the two for a while, both simply content to enjoy the peace of the forest. Still, this was a hunting trip, and Sylvanas soon started quizzing her sister on the different tactics to catch or kill different types of creatures. To her pleasant surprise, Vereesa did relatively well, and she found herself creating harder scenarios to test how far her sister’s knowledge reached. In the middle of an answer, though, both girls suddenly stopped speaking and froze in place. Grass crunched from the base of the hill, and as slowly as she could, Sylvanas turned her head to look at Vereesa. Once she’d caught her sister’s eye, she drew up an eyebrow, crooking her right thumb and flicking it twice in the old rangers’ gesture for “is it dangerous?” Vereesa answered by lifting her index and middle fingers, doing her very best to stay still with the rest of her body. Her fingers made horns. Antlers. _

_ In a single fluid motion, Sylvanas rolled backwards, grabbing her bow and pulling an arrow out of the quiver with her other hand. Within two seconds she had fired, aiming for the fleeing stag as it sped through the dry forest. It pierced its red tinged skin in between the shoulders as it let out a high shriek and fell to the ground. With her heart still racing, Sylvanas ran up to her prey. She sent a quick prayer of thanks to the sun as she scanned its pristine form. The small wound of her arrow was the only imperfection on its skin and she already imagined how it would look as the collar of a ceremonial cape. _

_ It took some time to figure out how exactly they would drag it home, but they arrived back before the sun had set. When they walked up to the Spire, Alleria was outside, lazing around on the terrace. “Hey!” she called out when she caught sight of them. “Mum, the Moons are back! They’ve brought dinner, but they’re both super muddy.” She stuck her tongue out at her younger sisters as she sat upright, stretching. “I claim a cut of the haunches.” _ _  
_

_"Vereesa spotted it, she gets first pick,” Sylvanas said as she set the stag down on the terrace. She stretched her shoulders as well, to shake off the strain of carrying the heavy animal all the way. “We wanted to bring you a salamander too. It sleeps in the sun the entire day, just like you.” _

_ "Not fair,” Alleria mumbled. She jumped up from her chair and briskly walked to the door of the ground floor. Lirath was waddling over the doorstep, seeking the support of the door frame with the hand that wasn’t holding his favorite toy. He quickly dropped the kazoo, though, instead reaching for Alleria’s arms when she bent down to pick him up. “What do you say, Lirath? Do I look like a salamander? Do I sleep in the sun all day long?” _

_ She didn’t receive much of an answer, as Lirath babbled a few half words before excitedly squirming and reaching for her ears. Once he had a solid grasp, he pulled them towards him and caused them to bend in a way that was definitely not good for the tender lengths. “Ow, they’re not made for that!” Alleria hastily set him down again. “Eugh, babies,” she scoffed, then walked over to help Sylvanas with the fallen stag as Vereesa went to scoop up her baby brother. She retrieved his kazoo for him, and he began to rhythmically toot on it as the youngest two watched their older sisters bring dinner inside. _

_ A little later, they’d all gathered around the table. Sylvanas and Vereesa had managed to bathe, and were no longer caked in mud from the waterhole. Lireesa was still glaring daggers at Sylvanas for climbing up the Spire a few hours prior, though they all knew that the eldest Moon would get into no trouble. Their dinner was far too good for that. Alleria was attempting to feed Lirath his mashed vegetables with a look of contempt on her face, since she did not like that her mother had asked her to do so, especially when he spat it out over her hand. Sylvanas leaned back in her chair while looking proudly upon Vereesa, who was doing her very best to finish the large portion of prime meat from their freshly caught venison. _

_ The evening sun poured in through the windows and the wind brought some coolness. Life in Windrunner Spire was truly wonderful. _

~~~

It was a quiet evening in Proudmoore Keep, and Jaina had allowed herself to take a break from the seemingly endless piles of peace treaties to instead focus on organizing her bookshelves. Slow, soft cello music played from the jukebox that she’d haphazardly shoved into the very corner of her room and with her windows wide open to allow the crisp Kul Tiran air to seep in, it was a perfect night. 

She toyed with a thin slice of apple between her thumb and first two fingers, eyeing how many pieces of toast spread with fresh goat cheese she had left before throwing the slice into her mouth and taking in the shelves that she wanted to reorganize. Sorting the books on title had been a rather bad idea, she mused. That had made it near impossible to gather books she needed for a specific subject quickly. By subject, then by title, would be much better. Or perhaps it would be wiser to order them by the author’s surname? Or by subject first, and then surname? Jaina took a deep breath, finding herself glad that she was allowed even one night with such mundane issues as she reached over to her silver platter for a piece of toast. She wasn’t able to take a bite before someone knocked on the door. With the music playing, she had not noticed any footsteps in the hallway. 

She responded first with a soft sigh, having hoped that she could make it through a single evening without being interrupted by her duties as Lord Admiral. “Who’s there?” she asked, slightly disgruntled, while putting down her snack.

“It’s Greta, Lady Proudmoore.” A soft voice of one of the Keep’s servants sounded from behind the heavy doors to her chambers as Jaina used a spark of arcane to flick off the jukebox, not feeling like walking all the way across her room to do so. “You have visitors.”

Unexpected visitors on a late night were not Jaina’s favourite thing to deal with, yet she put on her friendliest voice. She even dared to force a polite smile, though she was sure that it looked fake to anyone who laid eyes on her. “I wasn’t expecting someone,” she said.

A lot of scuffling before the door broke out, before the servant hurriedly added: “Two high elves, my Lady. They seem to be quite upset.”

“Alright, you can send them in. I apologize for the mess that my desk-”

The door was thrown open before she could finish her sentence. The servant was brusquely pushed aside by a very drenched and even more so angry Alleria Windrunner. She didn’t allow the mage to get a single word in before she spoke. “Jaina! What in the world?” she shouted, tugging Vereesa inside by her sleeve and slamming the door so hard that the windows jingled in their frames.

While Jaina’s heart shot into her throat when she saw the sisters, she replied, out of pure shock: “What in the world, what?” _ It’s probably something about a peace treaty with the Horde that hasn’t gone exactly to plan_, she mentally assured herself, but frankly didn’t fully believe that. 

“What? What do you mean, _ what? _ You know exactly what we’re here for,” Alleria spat, whipping around to her younger sister with such ferocity that Jaina felt droplets of water from the elf’s golden hair splatter onto her face. Both sisters were utterly soaked, making Jaina wonder where they had been. She didn’t catch the look that Alleria shot Vereesa, but it clearly wasn’t a kind one if Vereesa’s pleading face was any indication. The elder sister seemed to ignore that, though, as she turned her glare back to Jaina. “Sit,” she commanded, pointing to the chair that was behind the mage.

Quickly and without any objection, Jaina obeyed and sat in the chair behind her. When not confronted with all the Alliance leaders after having witnessed the most sought after person in all of Azeroth escape through a window, after having heard the most heart-rending speech in her entire life, she was a terrible liar. “I have truly no idea,” she said, putting on her best fake smile as she squirmed a bit, trying to make herself comfortable despite the hard pounding of her heart.

Whether the elves believed her or not, it only seemed to infuriate Alleria more. Her ears pinned back further against her skull, almost seeming to mold into the flesh. “Sylvanas is alive,” she hissed. “Alive and at Windrunner Spire.”

“Though she might not be at the Spire anymore. We don’t know where exactly she went, after we spooked her,” Vereesa carefully said. It was the first thing she had said since being dragged into the room by Alleria. Her voice was brittle and when Jaina looked at her eyes, she saw the telltale redness of tears. Unlike Alleria’s, her ears laid flat, drooping with sadness that Jaina recognized all too well after Theramore’s destruction.

“After she fled, to Belore knows where, to surely fabricate another plan to-”

“Alleria! You saw how she stumbled, how she fell down the stairs. She nearly couldn’t stand!”

“Yes, I saw that, _ Vereesa_. That doesn’t mean she isn’t plotting anything.” Nearly fuming, Alleria turned to back Jaina. The mage could practically _ feel _ her anger in her eyes; a fiery ice that burned through her skull. “_You _ were the one that told us that she died.”

Jaina stared up at the elder Windrunner sister, her mind racing with what to say. There was no lying anymore, though. Not that she really could. Truthfully, she still wasn’t sure how in the world she’d managed to lie so convincingly those few months ago, given how flustered she typically got. A sad chuckle escaped the mage, and she vaguely gestured to the large, turquoise couch that stood by the hearth. When both sisters remained standing, she sighed. “Shall I get wine?”

Vereesa was the first to move towards the couch, sitting down and wincing at the squelch of her soaked clothing. “Yes, please.”

“No,” Alleria snapped, making no move to sit down as she instead stared intently at Jaina. “We need to stay sober for this.” Her gaze averted, and she let out a sigh, seeming to soften the slightest bit. “Jaina…” she started. “You… We appreciate you, a lot. You are a very wise, friendly, and brave woman. I could say we consider you to be family, after all we have experienced together… but you said that she was dead. You showed us ashes. Ashes that… weren’t hers?”

“Please, Jaina.” Vereesa’s mere words in her quiet voice, filled to the brim with tears unshed, were far more impactful than Alleria’s angry rant. Jaina couldn’t find it in herself to meet her blue eyes. “Please, tell us the truth. What happened to our sister?” 

There was no use in delaying the inevitable. Both of the elves knew the truth, and while Jaina frankly didn’t know how to tactfully fill them in on the rest of it, they deserved to know everything that happened in Grommash Hold that day. She took a shaky breath, looking at Vereesa for a moment before Alleria, then to the ground. “I let her escape,” she admitted. 

“You fucking _ WHAT_!?” She’d tried to prepare for it, but Alleria’s screech was loud and cruel and grating, making Jaina briefly ponder if there truly was only one banshee in the Windrunner family. The mage flinched back and dared not speak, knowing that Alleria likely wasn’t done yelling, and continued to stare at the ground in silence. “After _ all _ that she has done to hurt not only Azeroth as a whole, but _ you _ specifically Jaina…” Alleria groaned. “_Look at me_,” she growled, and Jaina’s head quickly snapped up so she met the furious blue eyes of the eldest Windrunner sister. “She _ slaughtered _ Calia Menethil. She stole your brother’s corpse and raised him, only to immediately torture him in an attempt to kill you!”

“I-I know-”

“And even if you can somehow find it in yourself to forgive that shit, that does not give you the right to forgive her for everything else that she has done. You do not get to forgive her on behalf of Genn, who lost his son and his home. You do not get to forgive her on behalf of Anduin, who was thrust into this war _ far _ too young by that monster. And you do _ not _ get to forgive her on behalf of Malfurion and Tyrande and the remaining night elves. I have not met a single elf who did not lose at least one family member during her massacre - no - _ genocide _in Teldrassil.”

“I wasn’t trying to, Aller-”

“And you do _ not _ get to forgive her on my behalf.” Alleria stalked towards where Jaina sat, the Void’s powers seeping into her eyes. The mage could only begin to imagine what the whispers were telling her and she knew that, logically, she would easily be able to fight Alleria off if need be. But she wouldn’t do that now. The woman had not yet shown herself to be any sort of threat to her, and she clearly needed to get this out. “Give me one reason I should not open a portal directly to Stormwind’s throne room and alert Anduin of this… this _ treason _ right now.”

There was a pause as Alleria loomed over her, and Jaina opened her mouth. She allowed a moment of silence, simply to warn the eldest Windrunner sister that she was about to speak, in case she was not yet done with her angry tirade. She received no such objection. “It… It was _ her_.” She sighed, averting her gaze from Alleria’s still furious one. “It was not this genocidal maniac deadset on destroying the Alliance and every living aspect of Azeroth, it was… _ she _ was… Sylvanas Windrunner. Perhaps she was the Ranger-General, or the Banshee Queen of the Forsaken, or even the Warchief of the Horde. But…” Jaina looked back up at Alleria, who now stared down at her in confusion. “She was scared. Scared of what awaited her and scared to die, and- and she was _ alone_. She gave this entire speech about the meaning of honour, and the reasons behind her actions, and… and she needed help. She never wanted any of this, Alleria.”

The room was far too silent for far too long. Whether only a few seconds or a few minutes had passed, Jaina couldn’t tell. She simply watched as Alleria processed the information, her eyes flickering between Jaina and a point off in space as her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Jaina even dared a glance to her ears, and found that they were lowered. Finally, Alleria’s expressions settled, and her face was quickly consumed once more by absolute rage and the Void, mixing as one to cause Jaina to push herself further back into the chair.

“You would _ dare _ act as though my sister, the Ranger-General of Quel’thalas who _ died _ for our kingdom, was anywhere within that twisted mockery of her body? Jaina Proudmoore, I will-”

“Enough!” Vereesa stormed forward and grabbed Alleria’s arm tightly, yanking her away from Jaina. The mixture of seething rage and the inky Void flared up as the eldest Windrunner’s head snapped to the side, facing her sister. It quickly faded though, and she regarded her with a look of guarded anger that Vereesa knew was intended for Jaina.

Vereesa took a deep breath to steady herself, trying her best to stay calm. She was suddenly thankful that she’d had twin boys, as they only helped to strengthen her patience. “What Alleria isn’t saying is _ how _we found her at Windrunner Spire… Jaina - ” She blinked, suddenly aware of how close her eyes were to spilling to tears that filled them. She frankly wasn’t sure when she’d started to tear up again. “She was in such a horrid state; she - she looked like she was falling apart! She started to cough blood on the floor and I wanted to help her and I was nearly able to but then Alleria almost shot her and -”

“Because she attacked you,” Alleria muttered from between clenched teeth, seemingly determined to let her sister speak despite barely holding back her own anger. 

“And that was because we scared her. Why do you think she hid in the closet?” Turning to Jaina, the youngest Windrunner sister’s pleading eyes threatened to bring the Lord Admiral to tears too. “Jaina… please tell us… was there anything in her that was still… Sylvanas?”

“I didn’t know her very well before… before Arthas,” Jaina admitted. “I’d heard her name and the tales of her, naturally. And I saw her once or twice from a distance at some ceremonies but otherwise… I can’t tell you.” She paused with a soft sigh, and caught the poorly concealed disappointment from Vereesa. “Though, when I was talking with her, she said things that I certainly didn’t expect to hear from the mouth of the Banshee Queen. A very… deep and intense speech about honour and - and why it’s not what many proclaim it to be.” Another pause. “She also made be realize how much I have in common with her,” Jaina admitted, her voice smaller.

“Are you certain that she did not put a mind control spell on you instead?” Alleria grated, her eyes still full of fury as the rest of her face was schooled into neutrality.

“She was so weak, she couldn’t have.” Jaina shifted where she sat and looked to the floor again. “Besides, haven’t we all lost ourselves to our anger? Or at the very least, haven’t we all nearly committed unspeakable acts?” _ Or actually committed_, she thought, in the case of the Sunreaver purge. And when she looked back up, she could tell that Vereesa was undoubtedly thinking of that as well from the way she bit her lip and seemed to sink further into the couch. Jaina felt dread creep up in her chest, partially because she was guilty of ordering Vereesa and the Silver Covenant to aid her and partially because when she had gone to rescue Baine, one of the blood elves guarding the Chieftain had painfully reminded her of her crimes. Yet to her unabashed surprise, it was Alleria who spoke up first, breaking the awkward silence.

“When the Void overtook me, I thankfully still had the sanity to flee to the Dragonblight. To avoid hurting anyone… or so I thought. The Frostfeather Harpies hunted me away from their nests and I just know that there were casualties, even if I wasn’t in my right mind when I attacked them.” She paused, rubbing her hands over her bracers before continuing. “And when the Red Dragonflight came to investigate… I would have killed - or seriously harmed - them too, if they hadn’t knocked me out. Yet when I woke up, I was in the arms of the loveliest woman I’ve ever known, with endless warmth and kindness that I’m still not entirely believe I’m deserving of.”

“And that is why we should help Sylvanas,” Vereesa said, a stern insistence seeping into her voice. “She doesn’t have an Alexstrasza who sees the good in her and can heal her… relatively easily. She only has the two- well, the three of us.” 

“Vereesa, the Sylvanas as we knew her is -”

“No!” With a sudden spurt of courage, Vereesa abruptly shook her head and stood up from the couch. She stood tall, facing her sister fully. “Even if you don’t believe in it, you owe me this, Alleria!”

Seemingly unaffected by her sister’s sudden burst of boldness, Alleria drew up a wispy eyebrow and sighed deeply. “Do I?”

“I raised Arator for you, Lady Sun.” Ignoring the way Alleria winced at her childhood nickname, her sister took her gloved hand into her own and squeezed tightly. “Naturally, I do not blame you for anything, with all the perils that you faced, and he truly _ was _ a blessing within my household. But when you returned, I gave you your family. _ Please_, give me mine in return.” 

Jaina, who knew all too well how it felt to not have family that even remotely cared about her, decided not to interject and simply watched as Alleria’s face scrunched up in distaste, then concern and finally slowly relaxed. The eldest Windrunner sister closed her eyes, deep in thought for a few moments, so that the soft crackling of the hearthfire was the only thing to be heard in the room. Then she finally nodded. “Alright,” she softly said, squeezing Vereesa’s hands in turn. “But, if she resists again or makes a single violent move, you will permit me to act accordingly.” 

Jaina cleared her throat softly. “You won’t have it any other way, would you?”

“Of course not,” Alleria deadpanned.

“Then I shall get my staff, in case we run into any danger.” Jaina summoned it to her with a small hand gesture, watching with a subtle air of smugness as it flew over from a concealed space near her desk. After tapping softly on the central crystal to ensure it was in prime condition, she turned to the sisters, who seemed to be having an intense staring contest. “Um, I’m assuming that we’ll have to search for a long time, so perhaps I should pack some extra mana restoring potions so I can summon some mana buns for us when we get hungry? They’re in a small hidden compartment in the closet, so Alleria, if you would step aside -”

“I know where she is, Jaina,” Vereesa spoke, cutting off the mage’s nervous rambling. She turned to face her. “There’s only one place where she could have fled to… one place that she favoured above others. Sylvanas, despite everything that changed about her, is and will always be a creature of a few very strong habits. She used to have this hunting spot, where both Alleria and me spend countless evenings with her.” 

At once, Alleria’s head snapped in her direction and she said a single word in Thalassian that Jaina had no idea what it meant. To her surprise, Vereesa responded with a snort and nodded.

“Yes,” she said in a fond tone. “The one with the salamanders.” 

~~~

Salamanders. 

Jaina still had no idea what the sisters meant and Alleria nor Vereesa had bothered to explain it to her. They just had the same small, insufferable grin on their faces and looked at each other with a conspirative gaze that only sisters could share. 

When they had arrived at Windrunner Spire via a Void portal, the storm had ebbed away, leaving only the occasional gust of wind. The rain had stopped falling, though it had left large puddles of water, grey with stirred up dirt, everywhere that made the demolished landscape even more depressing to look upon. Alleria shook her head when Jaina made half a step towards the spire and motioned for Vereesa to lead the way into the woods. 

In a daze of sorts, the youngest sister did so, letting her feet and her memories lead her through the forest. At a glance, it seemed as if the Windrunners’ native land had healed from the Scourge invasion, since the trees bore beautiful red and orange leaves and the grass spread thick over the forest floor. Yet the further they looked, the more they saw the damage that the land had endured. Some trees were withered, rot and mold having taken over the branches and leaves. The grass wasn’t terribly healthy either. While it was plentiful, it was also incredibly brittle and bore very few seeds.

Eventually, Vereesa held still and pointed to a hill not far from them. “It’s up there,” she whispered. “There’s a lake and a grove of trees on the other side of the hill. She may be back there, though… something tells me she’d prefer her old hunting spot over sitting amidst the mud.” 

“Why are we standing still?” Alleria whispered, though it came off as more of a hiss. “We should move on before she can escape again.”

“And make so much noise that we will frighten her and scare her off? _ Anar’alah Belore, _do you want to repeat what happened in the Spire?” 

“What happened in the Spire only occurred because she _ attacked _ you, Little Moon. So long as she does not do that again-”

“She only attacked because she was scared! That’s exactly my poi-”

"I should go," Jaina abruptly said, cutting off the bickering between the two Windrunner sisters before it could get out of hand. As one, they both turned to look at her. Vereesa in confusion and Alleria in a sort of defensive anger that Jaina couldn't quite describe. Before either elf could open their mouth to speak, she continued. "Alleria, no offense, but she likely trusts you least of all right now. And Vereesa..." Jaina paused, letting out a soft sigh. "After Garrosh's trial..." 

She needn't continue, as Vereesa gave her a stiff nod. "I know. She doesn't trust me either at the moment. Garrosh's trial shattered that trust, and anything that was beginning to reform splintered away when she was attacked at the Spire." Her eyes flickered briefly to Alleria before back to the mage before them. "You should go. If what you said was true, then she probably trusts you more than anyone else in the world."

The thought frankly made Jaina queasy. The Banshee Queen trusting her more than anyone else seemed to say more about _ her _ than about the state that Sylvanas was in, but she wouldn't argue. She was the one who had offered the suggestion in the first place. Jaina forced herself to stand straighter and offered Vereesa her staff. "I have a dagger up my sleeve at all times," she explained when given a concerned look. "And though the magic I can perform with just my hands alone is not as strong as it is with my staff, it is still more than enough to defend myself." _ Especially in Sylvanas's weakened state_, she thought.

None of the three said another word as Jaina turned, walking towards the hill. Only when she was at the base of it did she glance over her shoulder, offering Alleria and Vereesa a reassuring nod before she made her way up the slope. It was steeper than she would have liked, but it wasn't long before she saw Sylvanas.

The banshee was sitting, leaning against a tree. Though her eyes were closed, her ears swiveled towards Jaina, and the mage knew that she had no opportunity for stealth. Instead, she kept herself calm as she walked forward. When she was but a few feet from the broken elf, Sylvanas spoke. 

"Proudmoore." The word was a hiss, broken from the back of her throat. Her eyes remained shut, and Jaina frowned a bit.

"How did you know?" 

"All of you damned humans stomp, as though you own anywhere you go." Finally, Sylvanas opened her eyes. They were dull, no longer burning with the passion of someone more than willing to fight and die for her homeland time and time again. She looked up at Jaina, turning her head with a gruesome, slick sound of bloodied flesh, quirking a sickly thin and pale brow. "Especially you Kul Tirans. If I can appreciate one thing about Stormwind's humans, it's that they have the manners to stomp a little quieter than you sailors do."

Jaina couldn't help but let out a soft laugh. "And the orcs?"

"Oh, _ Belore_," Sylvanas groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. "The worst offenders yet. I don't know how in the _ world _ I'm still able to get headaches after dying, but the lumbering about of Orgrimmar's orcs may be one of the worst sounds I've heard in my hundreds upon hundreds of years. And I've heard plenty, mind you." The mage laughed again, feeling herself a bit at ease. Sylvanas seemed to be calmer, more... human, in a sense, when she was not casually reclining on her throne. There was a pause between the women, though it was not nearly as awkward as either of them feared, before Sylvanas spoke again. "Why are you here?" Her voice was already fading to a hoarse whisper, having spent all her strength on an odd attempt at humour. 

“I came to help you,” Jaina said, her words slipping out before she even realized it. Without waiting for an invitation, she sat against the tree next to Sylvanas. They were almost touching, something that seemed almost less intimate than the information that the elf had shared only a few months prior. “No one aside from your sisters and I know you’re here.”

“You just can’t leave me to die, can you?” The question was laced with Sylvanas’s trademark mocking scorn, but it seemed weak. Forced. Jaina brushed aside the question, knowing that it was merely a deflection to avoid showing any sort of vulnerability that would inevitably come with a more serious discussion. 

“Sylvanas, I _ want _ to help you,” she tried, crossing her arms as she spared a glance to the woman beside her. She looked almost… worse than the last time they’d crossed, which made Jaina’s heart ache a bit. At the very least, she seemed mostly solid, which was a marked improvement from the odd shape of smoke and limbs that she had been while fleeing Grommash Hold. Still, half of her face was made up of her banshee form, which stirred and whirled while she raised a long, smoke colored eyebrow at her. 

“A prominent member of the Alliance “fixing” the former leader of the Horde?” Sylvanas scoffed, a grin twisting the half of her face that was not frozen in anguish. “What a nice, feel good story for you and your kind. You help me heal, then lock me up for the rest of my miserable physical existence until I am, once again, thrown into the aforementioned hell for eternity. Then you and your Alliance can feel good about yourselves while another villain perishes. Thank you for the kind offer, Proudmoore, but I’ll have to decline. I dislike pity and would prefer not to be your charity case.” 

Jaina faced her fully, staring at her in shock. Sylvanas hardly seemed to care, simply granting her a brief, bored look before closing her eyes again. A soft breeze graced the valley, brushing the golden lock from the side of Jaina’s face, and Sylvanas let her head rest a bit more against the tree with a soft smile that tugged its way onto her lips. Fleetingly, Jaina wondered how much of the wind she could actually feel. 

“Believe me, _ banshee_, when I say that I hold no pity for you.” Sylvanas’s eyes opened once again at the sudden change in tone, and she almost looked interested in what Jaina was saying for once. “I can sympathize with you and understand why you made the choices that you did but, at the end of the day, you still tried to use my own _ brother _ to slaughter me.” Jaina blinked, forcing the blue glow to fade from her eyes as she visibly calmed herself. _ You know that she feeds off of inducing reactions_, she reminded herself. _ Stay calm. _ “While you may have failed in that respect, thanks to Baine, you did allow me to form a better understanding of what- _ who _the Forsaken really are.”

_ That _ seemed to catch Sylvanas’s attention, more than the rest of what Jaina had said. She sat upright, immediately groaning in pain once she had but not relaxing once more against the tree nonetheless. “The Forsaken,” she repeated, her eyes seeming to burn softly before cooling. “What of them?”

“They’re safe,” Jaina said quickly, knowing from first hand sources how well Sylvanas typically took care of her people. “There was… great debate over what to do with them. Lor’themar and I were the strongest advocates for them, while, naturally, Genn was very against leaving any alive. In the end, however, we managed to agree to allow the remaining Forsaken to- uh…_ live _ in the city-state of Theramore. The residue of the mana bomb has very little effect on their senses, and they are more than happy to fix what was left of the city.” Jaina let out a hard sigh, her eyes flickering down to look at the brittle grass. “Derek is staying with them.” 

There was a pause, and though Jaina did not look up from the ground, she could feel Sylvanas staring at her. A moment passed, and then another, and finally Sylvanas broke the silence. “Theramore,” she said, and were the circumstances different, Jaina may have been proud that she was able to render the banshee speechless. “If your brother is staying with them…”

“I visit as I can,” Jaina said. “Once a week, if I can afford it. I still have yet to tell my mother and Tandred of his fate, as I’m still not quite sure how to go about that. But yes, I visit Theramore.” With that, Jaina finally met Sylvanas’s eyes again, attempting to mask the pain in her own. It had been three years since the bombing, but she still was not anywhere _ near _being over it, and was sure that despite her greatest efforts, her pain shone through. 

There was another moment of uncomfortable silence, lasting a few seconds too long for Jaina’s comfort, before Sylvanas spoke again. “I’ll go with you.” When Jaina’s face lit up, she held up her hand to slow her down. “Naturally, I’d prefer it if you could keep my dear older sister in line. If you think _ I _ can be feisty, you clearly have not seen her angry.” That prompted a soft laugh from the mage who, not even an hour earlier, had been on the receiving end of quite the furious tirade. “I would also like it if this condition of mine could stay between you, my sisters, and I, since I have no desire to see any of my old… acquaintances.”

“I will do my best,” Jaina assured her, not entirely sure if she would be able to enforce the latter rule upon Alleria. Vereesa, most likely, but the eldest Windrunner sister tended to be more of a free spirit. She stood up once more, stretching out her legs for a moment. Wordlessly, she sent an ice bolt high into the air, allowing it to shatter once it was high enough up. Blue crystals slowly danced down around the two, and when Sylvanas opened her mouth to ask what that was for, her sisters arrived.

Vereesa climbed up the hillside first, offering Jaina’s staff back to her. The mage gladly accepted it, not being terribly fond of having to rely on her hands alone for the power, albeit scant, needed for the magic she’d used. Alleria followed, her bow clutched so tightly in her left hand that Jaina worried she would shatter the wood. She shot a glare to Sylvanas, who merely offered half of a sly grin in return.

Despite the fact that Sylvanas had agreed to go “home” with her sisters, it was much easier said than done. To Jaina’s unabashed surprise, she stood up and batted Vereesa’s outstretched arm away when her younger sister wanted to help her. Yet after taking only one shaky step, she suddenly grasped for one of the countless wounds on her body. Her entire torso unraveled into her banshee form, twisting her upper body at an unnatural angle as she screamed in pain before falling over. Unfortunately for her, she slumped in Alleria’s direction and the eldest sister wasn’t inclined to catch her, instead using her bow to nudge Sylvanas away so she landed in the grass with a wet crunch of armour and flesh. 

With a flinch at the sound, Jaina knelt down besides the now unconscious woman and ignored the bickering as Vereesa started berating Alleria. She had carried Sylvanas before, very briefly. And just like when she had carried the Banshee Queen to the Warchief’s throne, there was an air of vulnerability that came with holding someone who had once been so mighty. And as with last time, Sylvanas weighed next to nothing. Jaina thought that her armour might weigh more than her actual body. While the sisters were still bickering, she secured her arms under Sylvanas’s knees and chest, keeping her head safely against her chest as she slowly turned around and started the walk back to the Spire. A moment passed before she heard the elves cease their argument and follow after her.

When had they arrived by the road and were about halfway down it, Sylvanas stirred, opening her eyes just a slit and peering up at Jaina with a kind of repressed anger. She opened her mouth to say something, though only a plume of oily smoke came out and she whined softly in pain while hastily shutting it again. She shivered in Jaina’s hold and every twitch seemed to cause her more pain. For some twisted, unknowable reason, it hurt Jaina to see her in such a state, perhaps even more so than when they had spoken that day in Grommash Hold. At least Sylvanas had displayed a shred of composure and confidence there, no matter how fake it had been. Now there seemed to be nothing left but a withered shell of her body and a restless spirit that threatened to fade into nothingness every passing second. She was very glad when they arrived by the Spire again. 

Though when Jaina was walking up the winding staircase and repairing several cracks and holes with a quick ice spell, Sylvanas began to squirm in her arms. She scrabbled at Jaina’s shoulders with her gloves and shook her head rapidly, so her tangled hair swayed wildly from side to side.

“You’re going to be okay. We’ll take a look at your wounds, I promise.” Jaina did everything in her power to soothe her, despite cringing at how Alleria kicked open the door to Sylvanas’s bedroom. They’d decided during their walk back to lay her down there, as Alleria’s bedroom was destroyed and Vereesa’s was named the designated room for her and Alleria. The other options would have been Lirath’s or their mother’s bedroom, but they did not dare to touch those, out of respect.

“There are very few resources here,” Vereesa spoke up while Jaina laid the struggling undead down onto the red covers of her bed. “I am going to look in the higher levels of the building to see if I can find bandages and a bowl for some water, but don’t expect healing potions or salves.” 

“Those barely work on undead anyways,” Alleria mumbled while roughly turning Sylvanas on her side so she could remove her cuirass. She drew her lip up in disgust when she spotted the gaping wound in Sylvanas’s back. “_Belore, _that’s a deep one. Who did that?”

“Nathanos Blightcaller,” Jaina curtly replied, letting her distaste for both the man and Alleria’s rough handling of her injured sister seep into her voice. With much more care, she stripped Sylvanas of her single boot, greaves and cut her torn leathers away until just under the knee.

There was not much left of Sylvanas’s body. What she had somehow managed to pull together after very nearly dying and fleeing in only her banshee form was naught more than skin and bones, still bearing dozens of wounds from her last fight against her own people. When Vereesa returned, Alleria had cut Sylvanas’s cape off her shoulders and Jaina was gently easing the remnants of her chest piece off her body. While Sylvanas hissed, squirmed and gritted her teeth, she couldn’t make a real move to stop them from discarding her broken armour. Vereesa laid a small stack of folded clothing on the nightstand. Trousers, an undershirt, a tunic and two soft leather shoes. All in faded colours and smelling old and stale.

“I found them lying around in the guest rooms upstairs,” she commented. “The shoes are from _ Minn’da’s _ room… I’m sorry, I couldn’t find anything else.”

“Mother’s indoor slippers, surely the best thing Sylvanas could wear now.” Alleria inspected the shoes briefly before returning to untie Sylvanas’s bracers. It went fairly smoothly, since the undead elf seemed to have sunk into unconsciousness again, her eyes closed and not reacting when Vereesa cleaned a deep puncture wound on her right calf. But when Alleria tugged on her left glove to remove it, she suddenly jolted, kicking Vereesa in the shoulder and hissing violently, jerking her arm away. The movement drew three red scratches on Alleria’s lower arm and she rubbed them while gritting her teeth. It almost looked like it was taking everything in her power not to attack her sister. “You know we’re trying to make it better, right? Lie down and stop being such a pain, you’re bleeding all over the bed.”

Jaina quickly took a towel from the stack that Vereesa had brought and laid it under Sylvanas’s back to soak up the blood from her wounds. Then she moved to help Alleria with the gloves, the last remaining armour on the Banshee Queen’s body. Again, Sylvanas tried to get away from them, shivering and failing to sit upright in her attempts. “No…” she mumbled, frantically shaking her head as fast as she could in her weakened state. “No, don’t.”

“I know it might hurt a bit,” Jaina said. “I’ll try to do it quickly, if only you would hold your hands still.”

“J-Jaina, no!” Sylvanas stuttered, trying to remove her gloved hand from Jaina’s grasp. But her strength was failing her and the Lord Admiral’s grip was far too strong. “_Please_,” she whispered.

The mage didn’t understand what she was so worried about. Perhaps Sylvanas was, as Vereesa had said, only scared of being hurt further. Her movements quick and decisive, Jaina tugged the glove off Sylvanas’s left hand.

She promptly gagged when she saw what lay underneath. In her thirty-six years of life, Jaina had seen many disgusting things. She’d spent her childhood surrounded by sailors who were more than happy to proudly show off their wounds to the all-too-curious little girl. She’d seen her own father’s corpse, with the blade of her allies impaling his chest. She’d seen her own brother’s body, slowly decaying as they shared a meal and reminisced on childhood memories. She had seen the body of Kinndy disintegrate under her own hands after the mana bomb. But she had never quite this much rot so close to her face. 

Underneath the clawed gloves that Sylvanas had always worn in her undeath, the bones of her hands showed, up to where the grey skin of her wrists parted around the exposed joint. Fillamments, blackened blood vessels and thin threads of fraying, decayed muscle decorated the area between the bones in a sickening display that made the contents of Jaina’s stomach stir. Yellowed tendons still connected most of the bones, twitching as Sylvanas stared up at Jaina. All too suddenly, Jaina could feel the burn of her red eyes, wide in horror about the state of her own body and of how she would be perceived. The remnants of Sylvanas’s hands seemed fragile, as if a push would make the bones fall apart. It looked painful, exposed to the air and elements. Jaina understood why Sylvanas always wore her clawed gloves. 

The undead’s eyes were nearly pleading, though accusing at the same time, as they followed Jaina’s hands, which put the gloves on the ground beside the bed. As she murmured an assurance to Sylvanas that they would heal her hands too, the mage moved to grab a pillow to support Sylvanas’s head, which still faded into smoke every now and then. The banshee hissed the second that Jaina touched one. 

“I do _ not _want blood on them,” she spat.

“Sylvanas is very fond of the pillows,” Vereesa said as she laid a hand on Jaina’s wrist, completely ignoring the scorching look from her sister. “Come and help us, Alleria.” 

Alleria, now standing by the window, waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the bed. “Help? With what? There’s more than enough people fussing around there already.” 

“Then at least get us some food. We could be at this for a while,” Jaina mumbled, looking at the expanse of wounds on Sylvanas’s body, now stripped of everything but her greyish undershirt and her leathers, cut off just above the knee. 

“Yes!” Vereesa chimed in. “Go hunt, let off some steam… you used to love that.”

With a mumbled “fine”, Alleria grabbed her bow and stomped out of the room, leaving Vereesa and Jaina to attend to Sylvanas. The undead seemed to have passed out again, slack against the slowly bloodying covers of her own bed. Jaina carefully grasped her under the armpits, turning her so she could treat the axe wound in her back. While dipping a rag in the bowl with water that Vereesa had brought, she silently cursed herself for not spending more time to learn a few healing spells. While she did know how to perform first aid, bandage a simple wound, control her frost magic to stop the bleeding and had a bit of knowledge of medicinal herbs, none of that seemed to have a use as she tried to help Sylvanas. The fact that the undead’s body constantly threatened to burst into smoke when she or Vereesa tried to place a bandage or clean a wound did not help either. 

Quickly growing fed up with that particular problem when trying to clean the deep wound that had exposed the white of Sylvanas’s spine, which only caused the flesh to fall apart and reform several times, leaving the gash wide open, Jaina eventually reached for a bandage and wrapped it several times around her torso with a frustrated huff. Then she enchanted the cloth to stay in place, effectively trapping Sylvanas’s banshee form under the wrappings, now softly glowing with various runes. It looked like an Ethereal’s bindings and Jaina hardly had the time or mental energy to fathom why she hated it. 

“This isn’t working,” she whispered to Vereesa, pulling her aside while wiping the blood off her own hands on one of the rags that they had used. “We can’t get her to heal like this. Not if she just keeps deteriorating into smoke the moment we touch her. There will be nothing left of her soon if we keep doing this.”

“No!” Vereesa hissed. She was a very bad whisperer, as Jaina knew from their time in Dalaran. “There must be something else that we can try.” She was trying her best to stay calm, Jaina could tell, but her eyes betrayed her and outright showed her distress as well as hopelessness every time she glanced at Sylvanas’s limp body on the bed. She seemed shrunken, her grey skin stretched much too tightly over her ribs and the bones of her arms. 

“Like what? How do you heal something without the Light?” Jaina inquired. “Since that… well, that causes undead intense pain.” 

“Healing herbs, potions and those gross concoctions that my Ren’dorei have learned to make. We too have to heal without the Light,” Alleria said while walking into the room again, bow slung across her back and two rabbits in her right hand. She looked better, had some colour on her cheeks and even a hint of a cocky smile on her lips. 

Letting her shoulders slump, Vereesa shook her head with a deep sigh. “Those don’t work. I put herbs in the water… they didn’t do anything while they should have helped the flesh heal, prevent inflammation, staunch the bleeding…” 

“Well, I’m sure you can figure something out. You were always the brains of the family, and -”

“Alleria! That’s not true!”

Shrugging, the eldest Windrunner sister turned towards the door with two long strides. “I don’t know what to do either, so I will at least try to be useful. I’m going to roast these two above a nice arcane fire -” she shook the rabbits in her hand. “ - and I’ll come upstairs with them as soon as I’ve found some plates that aren’t in a thousand pieces.” 

While watching her go, Verees’s frown deepened. “That’s Alleria when she gets… hopeless, I suppose. She becomes even more sarcastic and fakes her upbeatness. Aren’t we a fine little family?” She laughed, humourlessly, sitting down on the bed by Sylvanas’s legs. When she put her hand on the bandage that wrapped around her sister’s calf, the runes on it pulsed at her touch, preventing the flesh from transforming into her banshee form. If Sylvanas had been at her full strength, the enchantment wouldn’t hold her back for more than a second. Jaina knew this though, and had accurately guessed that it was more than enough to hold her back in her weakened state. 

“So now what do we do?” Despite how small her voice was, Vereesa’s sudden question startled Jaina, who had been slowly zoning out while staring at the delicate embroidery of the bedding. “How much time do we have until she just… evaporates?” 

Sylvanas looked indeed ready to evaporate at any second. While Jaina hated to disappoint Vereesa and could already see tears welling up in her eyes again, she simply did not know what to say. “I... honestly don’t know, Vereesa. In all my years of study I’ve never read about a case like this, though I’ve hardly read up on healing magic in general.” She let out a brief, bitter laugh. “Let alone healing magic for the undead. I’m sure there is _ something _we can do, though.” 

While the both of them thought long and hard, walking around the bed and trying to think of any alternative healing methods, they were no priests or medics. Somewhere in their pondering, Jaina spotted a plume of smoke from the corner of her eye as it rose from Sylvanas’s arm. Cursing, she ran to the nightstand where they had put the leftover bandages, grabbed several while knocking the bowl off it in her haste and soaking her boots when the water fell on them. Sending a swirl of arcane forward to capture the smoke, she felt her magic build behind her eyes as she restrained it to Sylvanas’s body once again. 

Afterwards she slumped against the windowsill and bent down to peel her wet boots off her feet. She was powerful, incredibly so. Not only due to her constant studying in her younger years, but also her decades of experience, Jaina was easily one of the most powerful mages in the world. Still, she was exhausted. Not only was her mana rapidly depleting as she kept the force of it constant against Sylvanas’s body, but the sun had long since set, leaving them basking in naught but the light of the arcane mage lights that Jaina had managed to summon amidst all of their troubles. It had been a trying few hours, only for them to have absolutely no idea what to do next.

Minutes felt like hours as they drudged past, and each second made both of the women acutely aware of how little time they seemed to have to save Sylvanas. Thankfully, they did not have to suffer through their uncertainties for much longer, as Sylvanas stirred where she was curled up. Both Vereesa and Jaina snapped out of their trances to look over to her, wide-eyed, as dim red light spilled out from beneath her eyelids as she opened them. 

Jaina didn’t waste a moment rushing to her side and cupping the cold skin of her cheek so Sylvanas had no choice but to look up at her. Her own blue eyes were wide, filled to the brim with desperation and pleading. “Sylvanas, we’ve tried everything in our power, but nothing is working…” The hand that wasn’t supporting the dead weight of Sylvanas’s head went to run through her hair, which was still loosely braided. The banshee’s eyes flickered, watching as more strands came undone and framed Jaina’s tired face. “Is there anything that can heal you?”

Sylvanas huffed out a sigh that, while completely unnecessary, did not sound forced or sarcastic. Jaina didn’t have time to dwell on it, let alone verbalize her confusion, before the banshee spoke. “It’s… complicated. And the reason I chose my old hunting spot.” Her eyes flickered to Vereesa briefly, seeming to narrow the slightest bit before she looked back up to Jaina. “If I consume or absorb the life energy from another living being, my body will rapidly regenerate.” There was another pause as she hacked, ridding her lungs of blood clots that found a new home in the fabric of Jaina’s sleeve. The mage hardly cared. Frankly, she’d been expecting worse. 

“Does it have to be alive?” Vereesa asked, stepping closer to where Jaina knelt besides the bed. It briefly occurred to the human that these were the first words she’d heard the younger Windrunner sister speak to her fellow Moon. “Alleria went hunting and brought home some game for Jaina and I. She is cooking it dow-”

“Yes, it has to be alive,” Sylvanas hissed, her tone far more impatient with Vereesa than it had been with Jaina. “Dead creatures do not have life energy.”

Jaina sighed, leaning closer, so her face was mere inches from Sylvanas’s. She kept the hold on her cheek firm, not daring to allow her gaze to stray from the dim ruby glow of the banshee’s eyes. “So if we can just find an animal and bring it back alive, you’ll be okay?”

“I would prefer to not have to resort to those means, Lady Proudmoore.” Though her voice still held that trademark air of annoyance, Sylvanas seemed to have far more patience for Jaina’s questioning over Vereesa’s. Despite the pang of guilt the mage couldn’t help but hold when she noticed Vereesa shy away out of the corner of her eye, Jaina forced herself to focus solely on the task at hand. 

“What the hell do you mean, “those means”? If this is the only way you’re able to survive and stay away from that hell you’re dreading so much, then I daresay that killing one rabbit is more than acceptable.” Jaina rolled her eyes as she spoke. 

“Yes, that is what I thought too, at first, when I struggled to the grove. Then I had… visitors. A doe and her fawn, looking for water. They came very close to me, most likely not sensing my bodily warmth because - well, I have none. I could have grabbed them if I wanted.” Sylvanas’s voice had grown softer, much softer, as she spoke. Even the half of her face that wasn’t covered by enchanted wrappings seemed to relax. “And then what, Proudmoore? See them deteriorate into ash beneath my hands, as their life bled from them into me? Watch as they would gasp for breath when I caused their very form to melt? I couldn’t.” 

“You, who killed hundreds of people, couldn’t kill two deer to save your life?” Jaina asked. 

Sylvanas flexed her deteriorated hands, so the flesh slid over the bones in a sickening display. With a small voice, turning her eyes away from Jaina’s, she admitted: “It felt disgusting to do so.” 

“Why?” 

Pursing her lips, Sylvanas frowned deeply, clearly unwilling to answer that question. Her eyes slowly started to close again and Jaina was about to softly shake her lest she fall into unconsciousness again, when a shadow fell over the doorway. 

“Dinner’s here!” Alleria said with fake cheer, walking into the room with three plates balanced on her arms. A delicious smell of roasted meat wafted from the meal. It made Jaina’s mouth water, as she hadn’t realized just how hungry she had become from the hours of tending to Sylvanas. She also wondered how much Sylvanas could smell of the roasted rabbit. With very little grace for an elf, Vereesa bolted forward to grab a plate from Alleria. Though similarly starving, Jaina hesitated for a few moments before taking one too and seating herself on the floor next to the sisters. 

Sylvanas drew up an eyebrow at their haste, before shifting to lie on her side despite the obvious pain it caused her. “If people already look down upon you when you eat messily, what do you think the Forsaken must endure when we feed in our own way? Being undead strengthens the body, not the mind. Allow me to be honest… and not a word of it will ever leave this room, is that understood?” 

After the repeated nodding of both of her sisters and Jaina, who all had their mouths full of food, Sylvanas continued. “You wish to heal me, correct? Yet when I heal, you will regard me as more of a monster than you already think me to be.” 

“Most likely, yes,” Alleria mumbled around a generous mouthful of rabbit.

“_Alleria, _don’t make it worse!” Jaina hissed. “That… that doesn’t make sense, Sylvanas. Why would we? How do you absorb life energy anyways?” 

“One of you -” Sylvanas glared around the room, resting her red gaze first on Vereesa, who hastily swallowed her food, then on Alleria, who wiped her mouth with her sleeve and finally on Jaina, whose food was rapidly growing cold. “ - will have to hold me upright, because I cannot even sit in my current state, and watch as I tear open whatever you bring me to drink its blood. I could also eat its flesh, but that would make even more of a mess than the alternative.”

Despite her hunger, Jaina found her portion of meat suddenly increasingly unappetizing. In a way, Sylvanas was correct, since it was quite an abnormal, not to mention gross, way of healing. Yet the undead elf seemed to have tried to phrase it in such a way on purpose. Disregarding Sylvanas’s sickening description, it was just… drinking blood.

While Jaina let her rabbit leg rest on her plate and thought deeply, Sylvanas continued speaking. “Vereesa is squeamish and she would start to sob profusely if she were to witness it. Alleria would rather snap my neck and I am not certain if I want her that close to me while I’m in such a state, anyways. So -”

“I understand,” Jaina said softly. She fiddled with her loose hair, brushing it back from her face. “It has to be me.” 

“And I just said, Proudmoore, I would prefer not to drink any blood, because it reminds me of just what I am -”

“But then you would die. Because… because I let you escape. Because I couldn’t kill you in the state that you were, after the things you had said. If you die in this horribly slow and painful manner, it would be my fault, because I couldn’t finish you off sooner.” Jaina felt tears pricking behind her eyes as she looked down upon Sylvanas’s body. Then she shook her head, setting her mouth in a determined line. “The situation you are in now is my fault. And it is up to me to solve it, so I will.” 

Setting her meal aside, she turned to Sylvanas fully, bringing her hand up to the buttons of her collar. Opening the upper one and wincing as the cold air of the Spire hit her bare skin, she caught Sylvanas’s eyes with hers. The undead looked at her in wonder for a moment, before the realization hit her like a charging Tauren. A hiss escaped her mouth and Jaina could see her lick one of her very sharp fangs. After a few seconds, Sylvanas broke her stare at Jaina’s neck with a soft grunt, as if the mere thought of blood for healing was all that was on her mind. Jaina thought to see a glimmer of fear and refusal in her red eyes. Then the banshee nodded, agreeing to the unspoken promise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sylvanas's hideout is based on a real spot I found in game. Comment coordinates if you find it. Or just comment anything. But fr, thank you all for all the kind comments! I'm glad our characterization is so accurate! -xore
> 
> nom -brazenedMinstrel


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you MOM for beta reading <3<3<3 @katzenjammers
> 
> Updates won't be as consistent or often since both braz and I are in uni! Sorry for that -xore
> 
> We adopted the "Forsaken heal by drinking blood" headcanon from lots of other fics, so shoutout to those! -brazenedMinstrel

_ “There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.” - Julius Caesar _

Rage threatened to cut off Alleria’s vision entirely as she dug her nails into the wood of her bow. She’d drawn her arrow but had yet to position her bow, much to the insistence of her youngest sister. Briefly, the eldest Windrunner had to wonder why in the world Vereesa was so adamant on helping Sylvanas after all that had occurred during the trial of Garrosh. Try as she might, Sylvanas could not convince her that it had been Vereesa’s idea to poison and kill the man. That was not the baby sister she knew.

She forced herself to once more focus on the scene at hand. Vereesa had gathered more herb-infused water and clean rags, and was almost skittish as she flitted around Sylvanas’s bed. Sylvanas had her fangs bared, and Alleria could have sworn that they seemed sharper now compared to what they had looked like prior to her death, and was explaining the process. “ - it should take no longer than a minute or two. Once I am done, I will pull away and leave you in the care of Vereesa. Understood?”

Those disgusting hands were gripping Jaina’s shoulders far too harshly for it to be simply just for support. Alleria wanted to march over there and rip her away from her friend, consequences be damned. She wanted to scream at her sister and Jaina that whatever was controlling the puppet of Sylvanas’s body was absolutely not the proud Ranger-General they once knew and loved. Instead, she simply watched as Jaina nodded. “Understood.”

Then the mage’s own hands went to Sylvanas’s wrists and grabbed them softly, _ tenderly_, drawing them away from her vest and settling them on her waist instead. Sylvanas seemed as perplexed by this as Alleria, but she kept her grip as firm as she could, to avoid falling. Jaina undid the rest of the buttons and clasps that kept her dark blue vest and cape closed, handing the garment to Vereesa, who took it with shaky hands and slung it over the broken door of the closet. She then carefully took her anchor necklace off too, placing it on the nightstand beside the bed. Her shoulders now bare, Jaina repositioned Sylvanas’s hands on the juncture of her shoulders and neck. Despite how odd it must have felt to have those decayed hands on her skin, Jaina did not say anything about them, and Alleria dared not ask.

Sylvanas looked starved and nearly insatiable, but still, Alleria noted how her eyebrows pinched together every time she looked up at Jaina’s face. And Jaina… Jaina looked _ calm_, which was what scared Alleria the most. She had made up her mind and there was no talking her out of it. She’d even gone as far as to threaten to freeze Alleria, should she shoot her middle sister without any clear, non consensual harm coming to the mage. She was holding Sylvanas upright, keeping the banshee _ far _ too close to her for Alleria’s comfort. Quickly, she reminded herself that Jaina was a _ very _ capable mage. She could kill Sylvanas with no more than a wave of her hand, if she so pleased.

But she didn’t. Instead, she only softly shook her head when Sylvanas pressed her lips against her neck, barely touching the skin. “Not there. I don’t want a bite mark in my neck, much less a scar. I still have to go back to my family after this. It’ll be a bit hard to constantly wear a scarf or keep masking magic around that area.” 

With a hum of acknowledgement, Sylvanas moved lower, until she rested her lips just below Jaina’s collarbone. Then she drew away slightly, frowning. “Jaina -” It was the first time she had said the mage’s first name, instead of coldly using her family name, and Alleria wasn’t sure that she liked the way it sounded on her lips. “ - this… on your chest -”

“Yes, that’s a scar. Don’t touch it,” Jaina sharply said, batting away Sylvanas’s hand when the undead moved it to touch the whitish spot, so close to her heart. “I was shot in the aftermath of Garrosh’s trial.” 

Vereesa gasped sharply. “You never told me!”

Shrugging, the mage directed Sylvanas’s hands away from her scar, up to her shoulders again. “I wasn’t going to bother you with my near-death experience when you had the death of your beloved still weighing so heavily on your shoulders.” 

Though Vereesa seemed like she wanted to either object or ask further questions about the event, she evidently decided to put it aside for later. “What exactly should I do now?” she asked instead, both of her hands on the water bowl. She looked nervous, far more so than Jaina, and Alleria scowled at the fact that she hadn’t raised any objections to this. Jaina was her friend, damn it, and the best one she had. She was the only one who truly understood the devastation that the destruction of Theramore had brought, but Vereesa seemed so ready to trade that away.

“You will ensure that the Lady Proudmoore is safely laid down once I am done. Immediately clean and bandage the wound, then make sure she eats and drinks. She will be quite lightheaded and likely unable to do much by herself.” Sylvanas paused, lifting her head up ever so slightly so she could look over to Alleria. “And sister?” 

“Yes?” Vereesa asked, her nervousness fading quickly as a glint of hope overtook her face instead. When she saw that Sylvanas had not been addressing her, but rather Alleria, she flushed and quickly busied herself with wetting the rags. 

Alleria, on the other hand, stayed quiet, though she noted the slight smirk that pulled at Sylvanas’s lips when Vereesa had immediately answered. She raised an eyebrow, prompting Sylvanas to speak as she dared not break the eye contact the two held. “You will shoot me, should I continue to drink for longer than three seconds after Proudmoore, if she so chooses, tells me to stop.”

“I will do far more than shoot you,” Alleria promised, her voice low. _ Slaughter her now! She is a threat, a violation of all you once held dear. Kill her now, remove her from this world. She seeks the end of all things, the end of all beings. Murder her. Murder her. End her. _Despite the constant urges from the Void, Alleria did not waver as she simply stared Sylvanas down. She received a cruel grin in return. 

“I would be disappointed by anything else,” the banshee purred, and Alleria’s scowl only deepened. _ What in the world does that mean? _ She thought, not daring to look away for even a second as Sylvanas positioned herself once again, ready to sink her fangs into Jaina. She hesitated, looking up at the mage who looked down at her in return. “And you,” she said after a moment’s pause, her voice warmer than it had been when speaking to either of her sisters. “If it’s too much, you must tell me to stop. The moment you say the word is the moment this is all over, whether I’ve only just started or if we’re two minutes in. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” Jaina said, her voice betraying her slightly. It shook just enough to be noticeable, and Alleria took half a step towards the bed where they sat.

“You do not have to do this at all, Jaina,” she said, trying to keep her tone soft and reassuring. “You owe her nothing.”

“I don’t owe her this, after having been in the position to prevent this entire… miserable state of hers? Alleria, we both know that is not true.” Jaina’s eyes flickered over to meet her own, now holding a sort of guilt that she didn’t bother to conceal. “I could have very easily killed her or turned her in to Anduin, but I chose to allow her to flee without any healing. She’s been in pain for the past few months and I’d like to help in any way that I possibly can.”

Alleria opened her mouth to object, but her words failed her. She looked away from the scene in front of her for a brief moment, remembering how her beloved dragon queen - who’d had no part in her pain, her troubles with the Void and the betrayal of Turalyon - had so readily helped her without so much as a second thought. She wondered what the Life-Binder would have to say about the entire situation that she and her sisters had worked themselves into. However, she did not have much time to contemplate.

“Do you wish for me to give you a warning?” Sylvanas asked Jaina, in the softest tone Alleria had heard from her since she left through the Dark Portal.

Nervously laughing, Jaina shook her head. “No, that would only make me more anxious. It’ll be hard to brace myself anyways… you _ are _biting into my chest, after all. Just… do it whenever you want.”

After a moment, Sylvanas muttered a few words under her breath. It took Alleria a few seconds to decipher her muffled voice, yet when she did, she heard that Sylvanas was in fact counting down, _ in Thalassian_. She wanted to shout a warning when her sister landed on “one”, but there seemed to be much less than a second between the word and what happened next.

Sylvanas’s jaw seemed to unhinge, baring her sharp fangs as her lips pulled back. Alleria felt her nails dig into the leather grip of her bow, her arrow aimed squarely at the side of her sister’s head. Vereesa let out a brief screech as Sylvanas lurched forward and broke Jaina’s skin, sinking in the entire length of her fangs until her lips rested against the mage’s pale, freckled skin. As she pulled away a bit, now only keeping half the length of her fangs in Jaina, blood started to well up in the holes. Yet what surprised Allera the most was that Jaina didn’t push Sylvanas away or ask her to stop, despite how her face scrunched up in pain and tears welled in her eyes. No, she instead folded her arms around Sylvanas’s waist and bent even closer to the undead. 

~~~

It hurt. Damn the Tides, it hurt.

When Sylvanas sank her fangs _ deep _ into her chest, far deeper than she’d expected, Jaina was sure that she would pass out. Reflexively, she clasped her arms around the undead elf and gritted her teeth in an effort to mute her pained groans. Sylvanas on her part barely seemed to notice it. When Jaina opened her eyes, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill, she saw that the banshee had closed her own and was lapping at the blood that flowed from the two puncture wounds with the vigor of a starving woman. Every time the blood started to clot and the wounds threatened to close, she bit deeply again, opening them further. 

As Sylvanas drank, Jaina desperately tried to distract herself from the stinging pain. She clenched her hands into fists and beat them softly onto Sylvanas’s back, her breath coming out in huffs as she quickly found that she could not hold back her tears. They threatened to burn her face, leaving marks identical to Sylvanas’s, as they streamed over her cheeks, reminiscent of the way warm drops of blood rolled down her chest. All of that warmth, the pure heat, was contrasted sharply by the coldness of Sylvanas’s body pressed against her own and the chill of her lips against her collarbone. The banshee flexed her jaw, somehow managing to bring on a new wave of pain that made the mage cry out before she could stop herself. Alleria’s bow creaked somewhere off to the side as the eldest Windrunner was ever so close to loosing her arrow, but Jaina quickly shook her head. She opened her mouth, though she was unsure if she was ever able to verbally relay the message. And still, despite the searing pain, she did not tell Sylvanas to stop. The woman needed this to recover… recover from a situation that Jaina all too quickly blamed herself for. 

The banshee’s hands grasped her shoulders even tighter as Sylvanas greedily swallowed down yet another big mouthful of warm blood. A small groan escaped her lips, muffled against Jaina’s skin. To the mage, it sounded nearly as a noise of relief. And it was exactly that moment that she felt it. On her back and shoulders, where Sylvanas gripped her, shivers crawled over her skin. She dared to glance to her side and gasped. Sylvanas’s hands were healing, actually _ healing. _Briefly, Jaina felt euphoric. It was working, her sacrifice was worth it and the problem was quickly being solved. She looked on in wonder as the skin started to regrow, knitting itself together and shaping over the reforming muscles of Sylvanas’s hands as her tendons shifted into their correct places and the blood vessels grew new branches. The odd sensation of the banshee’s healing distracted Jaina from the pain for a split second, as she watched and felt the skin regrow where Sylvanas’s hands touched her back.

Then Sylvanas pulled her fangs free and started to suck up the blood with renewed vigor, undoubtedly spurred on by just how good it felt to have her hands finally heal. Her lips formed a tight seal around the wounds and her cold fangs still rested against the skin above them. Her tongue felt rough when she licked over the holes in an effort to keep the blood flowing. Slowly but surely, the world started to become fuzzy before Jaina’s eyes, and quickly thereafter she felt so dizzy that she fell backwards onto the bed, dragging Sylvanas with her. The undead landed on top of her with a grunt, righting herself up with noticeably more strength than before, only to bend downwards again and resume her drinking. _ I’m losing too much blood, _Jaina realized dimly. 

“Jaina! She will suck you dry! Just say the words, and we’ll see if she can keep her promise,” Alleria hissed, looming over them with the point of her arrow an inch from Sylvanas’s head. 

“No… she needs this,” Jaina murmured weakly, despite the fact that black spots were starting to dance over her vision and she could barely feel her hands and feet anymore. “I promised, Alleria.” 

Mere seconds later, as Sylvanas dug her newly formed nails into Jaina’s shoulder and slid her fangs into her flesh again to draw more blood, the world went dark. 

~~~

Jaina’s eyes rolled in their sockets as the mage lost her grip on Sylvanas’s back. With a weak sigh, she went completely slack against the covers of the bed. Even then, Sylvanas did not stop drinking. She seemed to notice Jaina’s lack of response, as she gently massaged the mage’s shoulders, and Alleria could feel her blue eyes flare as her heart shot into her throat. She bolted forward, dropping her bow and grasping Sylvanas in the back of her neck with a single hand. It took only a single sharp yank to pull her away from Jaina, dislodging her fangs from the woman’s flesh and shaking her violently. “That’s enough!”

Sylvanas, seemingly not at all fazed by the crushing grip on her neck or the fact that she was dangling about a foot from the ground, only blinked at Alleria with a blood-drunk expression. She opened her bloodied mouth to respond, a slight, insufferable grin on her face. “She didn’t say to stop.”

Before Alleria could form a coherent sentence from the rage that boiled within her, Vereesa, who had knelt down beside the bed and gently touched Jaina’s forehead, said with a tremor in her voice: “She… she isn’t reacting!” 

With a burst of strength, Alleria threw Sylvanas across the room. She hit the wall with a sickening crack, a bit of blood that Alleria suspected wasn’t entirely Jaina’s trickling out from the corner of her mouth. Were she not so angry, she may have been morbidly satisfied at the sight. Alleria marched towards her, mustering all of the control over her voice that she could. “She _ passed out_, you sick _ mockery _ of my sister. She could not tell you to stop.” 

“She _ said _ I could keep going.” Sylvanas struggled to her feet, standing eye level and only a few feet away from her sister. She quirked an eyebrow, the faintest hint of a smirk crossing her lips. “And who was I to deny the Lady her wish?”

“I have had _ enough _ from you,” Alleria growled, the Void’s inky color slowly consuming her fair skin. The tattoo that ran down her face glowed, its blue so light that one could easily mistake it for white. Sylvanas had always egged her on, even when they were young. The eldest two Windrunner children were always competing, always attempting to one up each other in any miniscule way possible. This was a whole different level now, though, as her fury threatened to blind Alleria entirely once again at the thought of Sylvanas harming her friend. “Jaina may wish for you to stay alive, but thanks to you, she is passed out and I hold no such reservations.” She stalked forward another long step, quickly closing in the space between her and Sylvanas. 

“Then I don’t think she’d mind if I were to act in self defense,” Sylvanas responded quickly, smoky tendrils unraveling from her back. Her red eyes seemed to shine, glowing with something that could almost be seen as excitement, which Alleria was quick to catch. That look only caused more anger to bubble to the surface.

_ Yes! Kill her! End her here and now! That foolish mage does not know the forces with which she has reckoned. Only you can stop this abomination, this monstrosity! You can save the world here and now by ending her miserable existence. _

For once, Alleria trusted the Void’s whispers. They were, more often than not, the source of great anguish as she tried to keep herself together and remember what was right and what was wrong. Now, however, they told her all she needed to know. Sylvanas was a threat to all forms of being in this world, be it Light or Void, living or dead, order or chaos. And Alleria knew that she would have to be the one to put an end to this threat, once and for all.

Without another word between the two, Alleria lunged forward. Her void tendrils whipped out, and Sylvanas only barely dodged being grasped by them. She rolled out of the way, towards the bed where Vereesa now knelt, and quickly stood once more. A hand darted up to wipe away the blood that was still dripping from her mouth, and Alleria used that momentary distraction to dart her Void tendrils out. They wrapped around her sister’s form tightly, even as she attempted to unravel into smoke. As with the last time they fought in this same room, the Void seemed to hurt Sylvanas, as a hiss of pain rolled out of her throat. After pushing her back against a wall to hold her still, Alleria grasped for a dagger on her belt, the cool metal of the dragonhead-shaped handle somehow comforting in her grip. Meanwhile, Sylvanas’s face was bathed in the shadows of her banshee form as she opened her mouth to unleash her Wail. But no Wail came, nor did Alleria move to stab her. 

All because Jaina made a sound, halfway between a cough and a wheezing gasp, that caused both sisters to drop everything they held, their anger included, and rush for the bed. There might have been something comical about the speed with which Sylvanas hurried over to Jaina’s side, were the situation not so grave. 

~~~

The mage’s eyes were open, though only a very small slit. Vereesa hastily gathered water with a rag, gently patting along Jaina’s sweaty brow. She looked paler than normal, all the colour faded from her cheeks. Even the freckles lining her cheekbones and nose looked sickly. Her hair lay in wild tangles, the blonde streak messily entwined with the white. 

When Sylvanas licked the back of her teeth, she still tasted a few fleeting drops of that sweet blood. Her body felt fuller, her chest wasn’t threatening to cave in on itself anymore, and her legs were no longer shaky. Her hands, however… When she flexed them, clenching them into fists and relaxing them again, her nails dug unpleasantly into her new, tender skin. She held her hands up in front of her face. Illuminated by the faint blue of the magelights, she could see that the callouses she had accumulated when she had been alive were gone. Thin, whitish scars snaked in a fine spiderweb pattern over the skin, where it had sealed over the decay underneath. All the proof of her training, her battles, and her hardships had been erased in an instant. Bitterness gnawed at her mind, but Sylvanas could not concentrate on it for long. 

“She isn’t waking up further!” came Vereesa’s shrill voice, as it got when she was panicking. When the youngest sister stood, turning to Sylvanas, the undead elf hid her hands behind her back. “S-Sylvanas… what have you done?” 

Even though the void was fading from her skin, and Sylvanas noted that she was rubbing over what seemed to be a dragon-shaped amulet in with her left hand, Alleria glowered dangerously. “Whatever it is, she will need more healing than we can provide right now.” 

“I can heal her,” Sylvanas mumbled before she was fully aware of it. 

Instantly, Alleria whipped around to face her. “What do you know of healing? The only thing you know is death!” 

“If you’ll recall, dear _ sister_, I was a ranger like you. After you abandoned our family, I took over. I have dredged miles upon miles through forests, swamps, mountains, and everything in between. I have led groups that threatened to number in the thousands and I have been alone. I have healed countless battle wounds. So I think I should know of a few herbs that I can gather in the forest,” Sylvanas answered, a low fury slowly building in her voice. She glanced over to Vereesa, who chose to quickly look away and wring out another rag, before back at Alleria. The eldest Windrunner still glared at her, the look near deadly, but Sylvanas simply rolled her eyes in response. “Well, since no one is protesting… and you probably know better than to do so, I shall take my leave.” 

With a mock bow, Sylvanas took a single step backwards, in the direction of the half open window. She did not dare break eye contact with Alleria as she allowed herself to fade into her banshee form and filter out into the night. 

The sun had set some time before she drank from Jaina, and all there was left of Belore’s rays was a slight tinge of orange at the horizon. In a way it felt freeing, to be able to shift between her banshee and corporeal forms without threatening to fade away. At the same time, Sylvanas wished the breeze in the air could brush against her cheeks and revitalize her numbed senses, instead of simply being a hinderance that she needed to fly against. She wished that she could inhale the cool night air and refresh her dead lungs, but she had tried breathing before and could not get much further than the occasional sigh without getting the most horrible cramps and convulsions in her chest when she forced her dead body to do something that it couldn’t. 

Coming to a standstill on the cobbled road that led into the forest, Sylvanas did just that, sighing deeply. Even that, though she was able to do it, provided none of the relief that it had held in life. She needed two herbs, Silverleaf and Peacebloom, to make the crudest of healing draughts. And Briarthorn, if she was lucky enough to find some. Recalling that the two basic ingredients had once grown at the old hunting spot where she had fled to before, she set out for it. 

Every step she took seemed to bring another memory to the surface of her mind, as she walked alone through the forest that she once called her home. On a night just like this one, with the air humid and the sweet smell of rain still clinging onto every surface it could, she had set out with Alleria to see if they could spot lynxes in the dusk. They had once had a perfect hiding spot high up a tree that was now naught more than a withered stump. Nearby it, she saw a column of rock that had a few hollows in it. Songbirds used to nest in those, so tame that she had been able to feed them berries. She’d never gotten the chance to show Lirath how to properly feed them. With a grimace, Sylvanas turned away and followed the road further. Her tempo was so fast that she nearly stepped into a Silverleaf bush instead of spotting it with care. After roughly tearing off a few branches, she began climbing the hill that she had stumbled up when fleeing.

The memories did not relent. She remembered discovering the place by following a deer track with Alleria. The first time they’d found this spot, they had spent hours hunting up here. The meat had lasted their family several days. She remembered how the wind gently blew up the rocky slope of the other side of the hill. When she stared out into the valley beyond the hill, where she could only hear the river’s waters rush in the night, she recalled the first time that she had taken Vereesa there. 

They’d gotten so muddy.

Mindlessly, she stumbled backwards until she sunk to her knees beside a tall tree with a broad base. If she had possessed breath, it would have caught in her throat. If her heart had beaten, it would have skipped a beat. If she could, she would have cried. Purely led by muscle memory, she traced familiar patterns on the bark, until brushing over a carving in the wood. The tree had partially reclaimed the place where she had struck it with her hunting dagger. Her name was barely visible in the light of the rising moon, but she knew very well that she had marked the tree, so long ago. Hastily, she jogged up the rest of the slope, until she arrived by the waterhole. It had dried out in its entirety, leaving only cracked mud and the bleached remains of the grove that had encircled it. 

Here, Sylvanas remembered the summers she had spent with her siblings, carelessly lounging around by the small lake, stargazing and digging unsuspecting salamanders out of the mud. When Quel’thalas still held life, fireflies had danced in the air, their little wisps illuminating the night sky. Once again, Sylvanas fell to the ground, touching the cold mud with her bare knees, as she wore nothing but her undershirt, the leathers that had been cut away to midway down her thighs and the bandages that covered nearly everything else. In a fit of sudden fury, she ripped them from her body, as the runes that Jaina had so carefully placed on them, to keep her body from disintegrating, fell apart into sparks of arcane. Even with her elven senses, the pull of arcane was heavily muted.

Her tear ducts too stale to cry, Sylvanas screamed. A hollow, haunting shriek that ripped itself from her lungs and echoed in the night. When it stopped, she collapsed onto her hands and knees, digging deeper into the dirt. Near her left hand, a few light blue flowers burst from the mud. Peacebloom, as she had remembered correctly. Vereesa used to wear them in her hair when she had been small. She’d always been the best of the four of them at fashioning flower crowns. After Sylvanas picked a few, she saw more bunches of them, sprouting from the mud everywhere. Little plucks of life amongst the ravaged forest. 

She suddenly could not stand it anymore, turning around and running back to the Spire. She felt disgusting, a dead thing in the living part of the forest, in a body that wasn’t truly hers, with a mind that was battered by too much torturous pain for too long and not even a family to console her. She wanted to shed her skin, but not turn into a banshee. No, she wanted to feel warmth that didn’t burn, to be able to hunger and bruise and tire, to feel anything aside from anger and annoyance and the constant ache in the middle of her chest. She wanted to feel the wind on her cheeks and the sun on her skin and a _ real _ smile on her lips. The last time that she had truly felt like this, with this painful need to rid herself of her unlife… it had been after Vereesa had declined her offer. She had gone on a killing spree then, but could not bring herself to harm a living thing now. Especially not after losing herself in the delicious blood she had fed on just yet. 

_ I could have killed her, _ Sylvanas thought. _ If Alleria had not stopped me, I would have drained her entirely. _And for what? To feel, even briefly, life rushing through her?

When she arrived by the Spire, she did not trust her voice, so she did not speak in fear of betraying her feelings to her sisters. They had lit a fire on the terrace and bundled Jaina in seemingly all the intact blankets of the house. The mage still looked cold, however, as she sat against the wall of the house. They had also graciously provided her with a small, extremely dented cauldron, hung from a hastily made standard above the flames. Sylvanas put the herbs into the water and stirred, while Vereesa knelt beside Jaina and attempted to wake her. Alleria meanwhile started off into the night, her bow in hand and an arrow already half-drawn. 

After some time, Sylvanas grabbed the shallow wooden bowl that Vereesa had brought from the bedroom, emptied it by upending it near Alleria’s boots, and scooped some of her primitive healing potion from the cauldron, being careful not to get any flower bits into the bowl. She then went to Jaina, kneeling down besides the mage, whose eyes sluggishly opened. 

“Drink,” she whispered, trying her best not to let her voice waver with tears she could not shed. 

Jaina drank the warm potion, her short puffs of breath that she took in between the sips brushing Sylvanas’s thumb as she held the bowl to her lips. She drank quicker than Sylvanas would have liked, all too eager to heal, but Sylvanas did not entertain the idea of getting her to slow down or stop. Not when she longed for the saccharine, slightly bitter taste of a potion after a hard won battle once again.

The bowl was empty within a minute, and Sylvanas waited until Jaina was done attempting to get the last few drops in her mouth before she pulled it away. She set the bowl aside and fully sat by Jaina, offering her a forced, sly smile. “Half,” she said. “Drink half.”

Jaina let out a huff of a laugh, pulling the blankets that swaddled her even closer. Already, she was regaining some color in her face, which Sylvanas was too relieved about for her own liking. “You should have let me finish,” she continued, trying her hardest to keep a light, teasing tone to her voice despite how heavy she felt. “Now I’ll have to hunt down even more herbs when you inevitably complain about feeling lightheaded in the morning.”

“How terrible,” Jaina replied. Her voice was a whisper, but it was _ there. _ “Imagine having to help someone who just saved you from certain death.”

Sylvanas laughed, a teasing response on the tip of her tongue as she was slowly brought back to the certainty of reality, before she noticed Vereesa gawking at them. Jaina seemed to take notice of her sister’s eavesdropping as well, as her own smile fell and she darted a hand out from under the blankets to feel her own forehead. “I think I’m warmer now,” she said, her voice louder as she glanced to Vereesa. Indeed, upon closer inspection, Sylvanas could see that her cheeks were slightly flushed. She was still paler than usual, but was clearly starting to restore.

“Good,” Vereesa breathed, beginning to dismantle the archaic setup she’d constructed around the fire. “You should stay by the fire for just a few more minutes, if only to make sure that your blankets are warm enough when you go to bed.” 

Jaina nodded her agreement, though her brows furrowed the slightest bit in confusion. “Where will I sleep?”

“My room,” Sylvanas said, before Vereesa could open her mouth.

“And where will you sleep?” Jaina’s question was answered with a simple raise of the eyebrow, and she let out a soft laugh at her own expense. “Right. Forsaken.”

The fire was small, and it did not take much time at all to die down. Still, it provided the heat needed to warm Jaina’s cold body, as well as her blanket so she would remain cozy throughout the night. She almost drifted off on the patio as Vereesa and Sylvanas had a very brief and incredibly guarded conversation regarding how Arator and the twins were doing. Only when Jaina started sliding down to the floor, slowly, did Vereesa end their talk to shake the mage and help her upstairs. Sylvanas bid her goodnight with a slight nod in her direction, deciding in advance to allow her a few minutes to fall asleep before she retired to her room as well. 

As Vereesa was assisting Jaina in climbing the worn down stairs, Alleria came back from her hunt. She set herself up on the patio, seeming to not even notice Sylvanas’s small form huddled in the corner as she started preparing the meat that she’d caught. There was a moment of silence between the two, where the younger of the Windrunner sisters debated even saying anything. Perhaps Alleria truly _ hadn’t _ noticed her. Still, she felt as though she should say something pertaining to their fight just a few hours earlier. “Alleria…” she quietly said, not quite knowing what she wanted to talk about. For the briefest of moments, Sylvanas wondered if uncomfortable conversations were preferable to uncomfortable silence.“I -” 

“You what?” Sneering, Alleria turned around, staring Sylvanas down with blue eyes that threatened to bore holes into the undead elf’s skull. 

Suddenly, Sylvanas remembered the nature of their relationship. No longer was this Alleria Windrunner, the leader of the Farstriders and her older sister who was everything she aspired to be. No, this was now Alleria Windrunner, vessel to a fallen Naaru and the Void. This was Alleria Windrunner who had, according to Lor’themar, corrupted the Sunwell. Sylvanas sat up straighter, no longer attempting a casual air of conversation with the woman. This, after all, was not her sister. “I simply noticed that you have several new accessories, all with a dragon motif. The rumours about your courting of the Life-Binder are true, then, are they not? Or was is she who started courting you?” Truth be told, Sylvanas had not believed most, if any, of the whispers that had spread amongst the Horde a few months before their betrayal and subsequent attempt to murder her. What in the world could Dragon Queen Alexstrasza want with her sister? Yet now, she was admittedly curious to find out the truth. 

“It is none of your business, Sylvanas,” Alleria snapped. “Stay out of my love life.” 

“So there is truth to the rumours?” A sly grin crept onto Sylvanas’s face as she found herself in an odd Limbo of sorts, one that seemed to combine the devious nature that she held as the Banshee Queen and the old pattern of quips and jokes that she and Alleria had shared when they had been young. “Tell me then, what do you prefer: her dragon form or her human disguise? I daresay they would both have certain… advantages.” 

Unfortunately, Alleria was not receptive to the banter of their youth anymore, nor did she tolerate Sylvanas’s guile. She simply turned to the spire’s main entrance, leaving the meat she’d been preparing to roast above the dying fire, and mumbled “shut up” while entering the building. Not deterred, and in the mood for some needless pestering to suppress the grief and the feeling of disgust about her undead body that still lingered within her, Sylvanas walked after her. But when she arrived in the wrecked living room, Alleria was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Vereesa came walking down the stairs in her leather pants and undershirt. It was a painful mockery of many a memory that Sylvanas had of the times where they still lived happily with the family in Windrunner Spire. 

“Where is Alleria?” she asked. 

“She went upstairs to stew.” Vereesa sighed and wiped a strand of sweat-dampened hair out of her face. She looked very tired, exhausted by the crazy day they’d all had. Sylvanas was envious of the privilege her sister had, to feel tired, to be able to rest and feel refreshed when waking up. To be able to wake up in the first place. “I hope she’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

“Most likely not, since she knows that I will be in one room with Jaina.”

“Don’t, Sylvanas,” Vereesa warned, but there was no strength in her voice. “Good night.” After murmuring those words, which caused an unexpected twinge in Sylvanas’s chest, she continued to walk towards the terrace. Then Sylvanas spotted a glint in her clenched right hand.

“Vereesa,” she said. “Those are mine.” 

To her surprise, her younger sister turned and held out the three necklaces, their strings tied together. “You dropped them when you fell down the stairs. How… how did you find them?”

“That is none of your concern.” Sylvanas took the necklaces and marched past her sister.

No, Vereesa did not need to know that she had spotted the gems when she had crawled to the stone arc where they had been discarded. Neither did she need to know how she had desperately tried to grab them, failing time and time again as her fingers had not been solid enough to hold on to anything. And she most certainly did not need to know how she had clung to the necklaces when pain wracked her body, feeling the solidness of the gems in her hands as her body had deteriorated in the weeks that she had spent alone in the Spire. 

In what had once been her own room, Sylvanas was surprised to see Jaina lying in the bed. While the mage had her eyes closed, Sylvanas could hear how rapid her breathing was. The woman was not asleep. She also eyed the clean clothing that laid on the nightstand. After alighting a lantern on the desk, she took it and retreated to the adjoining bathroom to rid herself of the dirty, torn clothing, which had small, drying drops of blood on it. 

~~~

For all of the dust and debris that littered every surface in Windrunner Spire, including the sheets under which she laid, Jaina found herself surprisingly comfortable. Then again, everything would most likely feel comfortable in her current state, even the bed of Sylvanas Windrunner. Or perhaps it would be her former bed, since undead did not sleep, as she knew all too well from Derek. But the room itself technically belonged to her still. Jaina was not going to dwell on it for long. Her head still swam, she felt cold despite the copious blankets piled on top of her and she wasn’t certain if she could manage to wobble even to the bathroom without aid. “Aid” would be in the form of Sylvanas herself, who had insisted to spend the night in her room, reading by a small lantern placed on her desk. At least she had closed the curtains, since the moon was uncharacteristically bright. 

Yet despite her weakened state, Jaina could not sleep. Her raging thoughts and the small pulses of pain from her bite wound, which in and of itself had not been healed since there were no proper healers around, kept her awake. After what felt like hours of shifting under the blankets, trying to find a better position in vain, she sighed deeply and tugged at the shoulder strap of Alleria’s too big nightgown, which threatened to slip off her shoulder. She heard a soft thud as Sylvanas closed her book, then the padding of her footsteps over the floor. They were slow and nearly halting, as if the undead was still weakened. Eventually, the elf came to a standstill besides Jaina, peering down at her with those eerily glowing eyes. 

“You cannot sleep,” she said. A statement, not a question, and certainly not a judgmental one. 

“Bit hard to sleep, after someone nearly drank all of my blood,” Jaina murmured, voice thick with exhaustion. 

“You were falling asleep on the patio,” Sylvanas pointed out, a hint of a smirk in her voice.

“There was a fire on the patio.”

“I could set one in here, if you’d like.” The only response Jaina afforded her was a quick glare, and Sylvanas sighed. “Or I suppose I could offer apologies, if you would even accept them.” Seemingly disinterested, Sylvanas sat down on the mattress near Jaina’s feet, glancing down at the embroidered covers. “Perhaps a bedtime story?”

Typical Sylvanas words. As tired as Jaina was, she couldn’t resist a quip. “As apology, I would accept the story of how you fled to here. Orgrimmar is quite far away, for a near formless spirit.” She made a show of settling under the blankets and pulling them comfortably up to her chin, offering the undead a lazy smile that wasn’t entirely faked. 

At first, Sylvanas didn’t respond. After a few seconds, however, her wispy eyebrows shot upwards and her face scrunched up in distaste. “If that is what you wish,” she mumbled, drawing her feet up on the sheets and leaning against one of the pillars that held the canopy aloft. Her feet were bare, Jaina could see in the light of the lantern. Luckily her nails weren’t so long anymore. She seemed to have trimmed them. It dawned on her that she had never seen Sylvanas without armour of some kind. Even the few times she had spied her before her undeath, the woman had always worn either rangers’ garb or a ceremonial outfit. Yet now, in the faded red tunic, an old pair of linen trousers and one of Vereesa’s undershirts that the sisters had unearthed from somewhere in the Spire, she looked so small and miserable that Jaina very nearly offered her one of the three blankets that she laid under. 

Yet before the thought could fully take root, Sylvanas cleared her throat and spoke, though she didn’t look up to catch Jaina’s eyes. “When… when I fled from Orgrimmar, the winds took me. They captured me when I flew away. As weak as I was, I could not stop them… so they tossed me around like a plaything, above the desert and the plains, towards the sea.” Pausing, Sylvanas looked to the window, where a shimmer of moonlight peeked from between the curtains and illuminated a sliver of the wall on the opposite side of the room. “When they let me go, I fell to the earth. Eventually, I found a village, where no one saw me, and the ones who did only thought me a ghost. In all honesty, I was little more than one. Most of the time, I was barely able to have a solid form. Travelling on foot was… difficult.”

Though Jaina’s heart shrank in her chest, she bit her lip to hide the sting of guilt and asked: “How did you get to the other side of the sea? Surely the wind didn’t carry you all the way. You would have fallen into the water and drowned.”

“I am uncertain whether I can drown,” Sylvanas morosely reminded her. “But, well… I snuck into a ship’s cargo like some wayward rat. There were mages aboard, because I could feel the portals when we went through them. I hungered for the arcane, but I did not show myself. The ship brought me to the frozen wastes of Northrend, though I could not feel the cold. Then I boarded another ship, a larger vessel, perhaps even one of yours. But it veered south… to Stormwind. So I left the ship at night and dredged myself out of the water.”

There was another, longer pause, in which Sylvanas finally sought out Jaina’s eyes. The mage found herself captured by an incredible sadness in those red eyes. She decided not to interject, instead waiting until Sylvanas said in a paper-thin voice that creaked with tears in her throat, even though she didn’t know if undead could cry: “I was not fully conscious when I washed up on the beach… but when I awoke, it was because some starved vermin was walking over me, thinking me an easy meal. I crushed it between my hands and absorbed what precious little life it still held.” She paused once more, and let out an angry huff of a laugh. “I felt disgusted by myself. And even more so when I wandered through the hills, avoiding any traces of life, should I repeat my mistake. After… it must have been days, I recognized where I was. The outskirts of what was once called Lordaeron.” 

Though she wasn’t entirely sure why, Jaina made an attempt to sit upright, only for everything to blur before her eyes. An eerily cold hand came to rest upon her shoulder, steadying her and pushing her back into the plush pillows. Sylvanas was now kneeling beside her, resting one hand on the bed to support herself. Clearly she wasn’t back to full strength yet.

“Lie down… only one of us can sleep here.” With those words, Sylvanas rested her weight against the headboard and looked down upon Jaina, who, despite the minute distance between them, did not feel threatened even slightly. She startled herself with that realization, but simply didn’t have the energy to dwell on it for long. “You may call me weak, but I avoided the ruins of my city. I made my way around it, in case I would be recognized by _ anything _that still dwells there. I could not stay there… not while a strong gust of wind could blow me apart. So I followed the Dead Scar upwards, to what I knew I would eventually find. Ruins of the buildings I was supposed to protect, echoes of those who I failed… my home.” 

As she uttered those last two words, Sylvanas’s voice finally broke. She let her head fall back against the wall with a dull thud, uttering a single dry sob. Jaina wormed a hand out from under the blankets and, after softly tapping on the elf’s sleeve and getting no sign of refusal, let it rest on her arm. Sylvanas did not quite accept the contact or acknowledge it, but she made no move to shrug Jaina off either. With her free hand, Sylvanas picked something from the pocket of her trousers. Three jewels on simple leather strings. A blue one amidst its green and red sisters, shimmering in the soft orange light of the lantern that still stood on Sylvanas’s desk. 

“I found these by the stone arc, the old border of the Spire’s grounds. I tied them together… for the memories? I don’t quite know why. With the last of my strength, I crawled to the building, before my body bust apart into such thin smoke that I was sure I would vanish from reality. When I collected myself, I laid in the room downstairs… a broken thing amongst the other broken things in this place. All that remains of what it once was.” Without attempting to hide her sadness, perhaps protected by the dark of the night, Sylvanas held the three necklaces to her face, touching the cold gems to her colder skin. “It must have been… weeks. I stayed here, roaming the Spire in the times that I was anything more than a shred of a spirit, with no body to form, yet torturous pain that followed me no matter what I tried. Then, one day, I heard voices amongst the thunderous rain. To my horror, I recognized them, and immediately hid in… well, you know the rest. Alleria and Vereesa must have told you.” 

“You hid in the closet and attacked them when they scared you,” Jaina said, with the sting of tears in her throat to match Sylvanas’s sadness. “I am so sorry that I didn’t help you sooner, Sylvanas.” 

“My torment isn’t your fault, Jaina,” Sylvanas murmured, still making no move to dislodge Jaina’s hand from where it laid on her arm. “If anything, I have you to thank for not leaving me to fade away into that hell I described to you, in the Hold. You saved my life twice, Jaina. I am indebted to you, greatly so.”

That was not something Jaina was particularly comfortable with, though she was too tired to think about it. Instead, she slowly retracted her hand, as it was rapidly growing cold, and felt her eyelids droop. Still, she had to say something to convey her thoughts to Sylvanas. “Thank you for sharing the story with me,” she murmured. “Will you accept an apology for making you regale all those… unpleasant things?” 

“Accepted.” With a slight shrug, Sylvanas quickly got up from her kneeling position, sliding off the bed and retreating to her desk. The suddenness of the movement took Jaina aback a bit, and she wished that the banshee would have been a little more eloquent, or had even lingered for a little longer.

But before she could even see how Sylvanas dimmed the light of the lantern and closed the curtains so truly no light shone into the room anymore, then proceeded to draw her feet up to the seating of her chair, rest her chest against her folded legs, and clasp her arms around herself, Jaina finally succumbed to the embrace of sleep. Perhaps that was better than to watch as the former Banshee Queen screwed her eyes tightly shut and damned herself a hundred times over for failing to keep her weakness to herself, where it was safe. 

~~~

“How’s she doing?” Alleria asked, washing off the dishes from their freshly caught breakfast in a bucket of water she’d retrieved from Quel’thalas’s major river. She glanced up to Vereesa as she opened the door to the patio and offered two more plates, the ones from her and Jaina’s breakfast. Her sister offered her the barest hint of a smile and sat in the singular, unbroken seat that the scourge had so graciously left them.

Alleria grimaced at the thought, but didn’t allow it to linger for long as Vereesa spoke. “She’s doing alright. She… didn’t sleep at all last night, but she’s no longer fading into her banshee form, and-”

“I meant Jaina.” Alleria glanced over to Vereesa, her ear twitching in annoyance. She cared very little, if at all, about the wellbeing of whatever was occupying Sylvanas’s body, despite how… entranced both Vereesa and Jaina seemed to be. She received a soft huff in response.

“Jaina’s doing well. She’s tired, though she said the meal helped. I think she’s napping again now.” Vereesa looked out to the sea for a moment, watching the roll of the soft waves before glancing back to Alleria. “She’s decided to stay a few days, and sent notes to her mother and Anduin alerting them that we’ve insisted she take a vacation with us. Anduin’s already responded, wishing her the best and saying that he’s glad she’s finally taking some time to relax.”

Alleria’s lips twisted up into an almost wistful smile. “She deserves some time off, though not exactly like this.” Another plate was set aside, as clean as it could be, and the eldest Windrunner started working on the final one. “And how are our boys?”

“Giramar and Galadin have made an absolute mess of our home, but it’s less than what they would have done if Arator wasn’t watching over them.” Vereesa let out a gentle laugh, already missing her sons. “I think he’s gone a bit soft. He used to be such a calming influence on my boys, but when I visited this morning, he was helping them hide mana buns from me.”

Alleria couldn’t help her grin as she finished washing the last plate. “He has mentioned missing his cousins as of late whenever he’s come to visit Alex and I.” She paused, and though it looked like she was simply taking a moment to study the way the waves crashed against one of the rocks on the shore, Alleria’s mind raced. She’d thanked Vereesa before, naturally, but it had never felt quite right. There was truly no way to make up for all her sister had done for her and Arator. Regardless, it never hurt to remind the youngest Windrunner how much she meant to her, and Alleria intended on keeping the family that she still had. “He had a wonderful childhood, you know. Despite the scourge invasion, you always managed to keep him safe and happy, and I know that he thinks fondly of not only you and his cousins, but Rhonin as well.” Alleria finally tore her eyes from the beach, instead studying Vereesa’s. “You will never know how much that means to me, nor how much it pains me that I can never make it up to you.”

“You can,” Vereesa all but whispered, fighting back tears. Though the mention of Rhonin alone no longer threatened to break her, she could not help but remember the night that he had held her close and told her that he wanted to try for a child, given how much they both loved Arator. She forced herself to snap out of the memory and looked to her sister, not bothering to hold back her pleading expression. “I know why you’re wary. I understand; I really, _ really _do. But Sylvanas was all I had after you left. She took in Arator just as much as I did, and cared for him all the same. She was always there for me, no matter what I needed, and-” Vereesa paused, choking back a sob. “-and I didn’t tell you everything about what happened during Garrosh’s trial.”

“I know what I need to,” Alleria said quickly, breaking their eye contact. “You said it yourself. She tried to manipulate you into killing him and into leaving your sons behind to live in the Undercity with her. Were it not for Anduin, you would have fallen into her trap.”

“Before that,” Vereesa insisted. She stood from her chair and moved to sit in front of her eldest sister, hastily ridding her eyes of the tears that had filled them. “When we first met, Sylvanas asked to meet here. At the Spire. When we spoke, she taunted me, even more so than when we were children, and much less playfully. But when I told her why I wanted Garrosh dead, what that _ monster _had taken from me… She did not judge. Alleria, she stepped forward and hugged me and let me cry and did not care that I clung so tightly to her I left marks and cried so much I stained her armour with snot.” Vereesa paused for a moment, then, to shakily take a breath, and managed to look up from where she’d been staring at the ground to meet her sister’s eyes once more. “She has always been there for me, Alleria. And I know that it may not be the best idea, but I need to be there for her. I need to give her a chance.”

There was another pause between the two, neither sister looking away from the other’s eyes, before Alleria sighed and stood. She offered her hand to Vereesa who, with a soft frown of confusion, accepted it and stood upright. “I will not hold your feelings against you, sister. I understand why you feel the way that you do, but please understand why I have my reservations.” Vereesa opened her mouth to speak, but Alleria did not allow her. “I will not be alerting any of our fellow Alliance leaders of what is going on. Not only for her, don’t get me wrong. Also out of self-preservation. That being said…” She paused, sighing. “I cannot simply sit around and watch…” Another pause, this one shorter. “_Sylvanas_,” she grated, not feeling like arguing with Vereesa over what exactly was in the body of their sister, “be coddled and treated as though she did not commit genocide. As though she did not attempt to kill Jaina and I. Multiple times, in Jaina’s case!”

“Alleria…” Vereesa warned. 

“I know.” With a sigh, the eldest Windrunner looked to the side. She stole her hands away from Vereesa’s, cracking her knuckles on both hands. With an almost dismissive wave of her hand, a Void portal opened up beside the two. “You and Jaina may do as you please, but I can’t stay here.”

As Alleria took a step towards the portal, Vereesa followed, shaking her head the slightest bit. “Where will you go?”

A brief pause echoed between the two before Alleria interrupted it. “To someone who can keep a secret,” she said, and stepped through the portal.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luna posted some amazing art on tumblr for chapter one. Go check it out! https://lunamaniac94.tumblr.com/post/188232599798/scene-from-enduring-pain-with-patience-written-by
> 
> Also thanks indie for reading we love youuuu 
> 
> Just so everyone knows, we planned and wrote (some of) this fic before 8.2.5 was announced and released. We will not be covering the events that led to the second siege of Orgrimmar and chapter one, as we don't believe they're important. It's not what the fic is focusing on. We ask that you respect that and just focus on what we've written without assuming that it will rely on canonical content post 8.2.
> 
> -xore

_ “Experience is the teacher of all things.” - Julius Caesar _

Her bed in Wyrmrest Temple was decidedly warmer, softer, larger and more comfortable than the dusty, strangely smelling, hard mattress that she had shared with Vereesa, Alleria decided when waking up from a deep sleep. At least half of that warmth and softness was thanks to the naked body of the Life-Binder, who was still softly snoring next to her. Her fiery red hair laid spread over the pillow, entirely too enticing for Alleria to snuggle with. But she wrestled herself from the sheets and slowly stretched her arms and back, scratching on her head a bit before slinking out of the bed. After quickly slipping into her underwear, a loose pair of cotton pants and a shirt, she opened the heavy red curtains and took in the beautiful light of the sunrise that slowly crept over the snowy mountains outside. 

A pair of red dragons, a small one and a slightly larger one, most likely two of Alexstrasza’s children, flew over the temple, back from an early morning trip. Alleria grinned when the smaller drake spotted her and proceeded to do an extravagant looping in the air. Then she turned around to take a long hot bath with plenty of scented oils and soap, just to ensure that she had rinsed every last speck of dried blood and dirt, from various sources, out of her hair. 

By doing so rather inelegantly, she stepped on one of her bracers, which she had hastily thrown in the general direction of a chair the evening prior. It made so much noise that she awoke Alexstrasza, who sat upright in the bed and blinked sluggishly, her golden eyes squinted. “Already awake, my heart?” she said with a small chuckle. 

“As much as I wish to, I couldn’t sleep anymore. We both went to bed early, yesterday.” 

“_You _ went to bed early, falling asleep on my lap as I read a book,” Alexstrasza replied, rising from the bed. Alleria felt her cheeks heat up as the dragon queen did not bother wrapping anything around herself until she had leisurely walked to the closet to pick a robe. Clad in a particularly nice, dark red robe with golden embroidery along the sleeves, she joined Alleria by the window. “I think you will be pleased to hear that I have come to a conclusion about… what you and I spoke about yesterday evening.” 

Alleria sighed. “Must we start the day with it, _ dalah’surfal_?” 

“I thought you wanted it off your mind as quickly as possible. And I wish nothing but the best for you and your family.” She took Alleria’s hand, brushing her thumb softly over her calloused fingertips before bringing it to her lips and pressing the softest of kisses against her knuckles. “I think I know of a way to please everyone involved.”

Alleria laughed softly, the noise more a huff than a real laugh. She withdrew her hand from Alexstrasza’s gentle hold, instead loudly cracking her knuckles. “I didn’t know that was a possibility. I care for Jaina deeply and love Vereesa like no other, but our viewpoints on this… issue simply do not align.” She paused, letting out a soft sigh. It had never been particularly easy for the eldest Windrunner to let down her guard and speak about her feelings, but Alexstrasza tended to be someone who was incredibly easy to speak to. Whether it was because of their mutual love for one another or because of the dragon’s nature, Alleria wasn’t sure. But she would not allow herself to simply refute the kindness that was offered to her. Her voice lowered, Alleria continued. “I don’t trust her. I understand why Vereesa so badly wants to heal her, and I’m sure that she spun quite the convincing tale to Jaina. But I simply cannot sit idly by and allow her to heal, only to harm Azeroth and her people once more.”

“You no longer see her as your sister,” Alexstrasza said simply. When Alleria looked back to her face, she expected judgement in those kind golden eyes, but there was none to be found. Instead, her beloved regarded her with understanding, imploring Alleria to continue so she could assist with her issues in any way possible. 

“I see no reason to,” Alleria admitted, her eyes dropping once again. She could feel her anger slipping away with Alexstrasza’s understanding. All too often, the dragon reminded her not only of how much better of a person she could be, but how much she was appreciated. How hard the dragon had worked to heal her after her… unfortunate slip further into the madness of the Void. Keeping her voice calm, Alleria continued, trying to rationalize her opinion. “She has done things that my sister would simply never have done.”

“And haven’t you done things that you would never do, had the Void not taken over your mind?” 

Alleria’s head snapped up, and she raised one of her eyebrows. “That is certainly not the same thing. Yes, I… may have continued on that path. But I would _ not _ have burnt Teldrassil and attempted to kill my own family.” She paused, taking a moment to force the slowly building aggression out of her voice. “Besides, I changed. I am here now, with you, no longer slipping further and further into madness.”

“Precisely.” Despite Alleria’s brief anger, Alexstrasza’s voice was calm. Steady. Reassuring. “Being here, with me, in this sanctum of peace and safety, has changed you.” She paused, gazing at the mountains outside for a moment. “And I believe that it can change Sylvanas too. You only need to give her a chance.” 

_ Give her one chance and watch as she takes it to destroy Azeroth, _Alleria thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not to her beloved dragon queen, who gave her a certain stern look that spoke volumes, despite only being dressed in a loose robe and the jewelry on her horns. When the Life-Binder had something on her mind, it was hard for Alleria to dissuade her. And usually that wasn’t that much of a problem, since Alexstrasza lived to nourish the life in her sanctum and protect Azeroth. But to let someone who could destroy Azeroth into that sanctum? Alleria groaned. “Please tell me you’re not actually thinking about bringing her here?” 

At that, Alexstrasza clasped her hands together and smiled warmly. _ Great Belore, she’s serious, _Alleria thought.

“Why would I not?” The hope in the Life-Binder’s voice nearly made Alleria forget who they were talking about altogether. “It’s most certainly a safer place than Windrunner Spire. There are no undead here, no vengeful spirits, no Sin’dorei on a pilgrimage to pay their respects to their fallen saviours.” Alexstrasza beckoned Alleria to follow her, and so the elf did, walking in silence next to her lover until they stood on the patio of Alexstrasza’s residence within the Ruby Sanctum. Ever since it had been savagely attacked by the Twilight Dragonflight, they had been rebuilding it, having added a large, comfortable house for the Life-Binder and her flight. It had several connections to the interior of the temple itself, enough rooms for the entire red flight and any guests they would want to receive. There were large dining halls, storage chambers that could hold enough food to feed a literal horde of dragons and, most importantly, twice as many hot springs than before the revisions. It truly was a far cry from the way they had lived before banding together to restore Wyrmrest Temple and their sanctum. According to Alexstrasza, they had been spread all over Azeroth, without a central base. 

Now, when the two looked out over the lush sanctum, where one of Alexstrasza’s older children, in her human form, was herding three small dragons from one side of the fields in front of the Life-Binder’s house to the other, undoubtedly on their way to training of some sort. Another one carried a stack of wooden planks, on their way to one of the buildings that still needed to be repaired. Despite the progress of the last few years, there was still much work to be done. Alexstrasza wanted to move all the functions of the temple, which included housing the Red Dragonflight, storing large amounts of food for said Dragonflight and acting as a playground for the younger red dragonlings, inside the sanctum, so the temple could return to its original purpose; a final resting place and a place to say goodbye and pay honours to the deceased. To Alleria, the Ruby Sanctum was such an idyllic place that she could not, nor did she want to, imagine Sylvanas stomping around in it. 

Clearly, Alexstrasza had different thoughts. She was adamant to resume her duty of protecting and nourishing all life on Azeroth, after needing to abandon it for some time after being grievously injured by Deathwing. The Life-Binder had chosen to focus on her own dragonflight first. The scars of said battle still painted her body and sometimes, Alleria could see the pain of the memory in her eyes. Still, that did not have to mean that she had to allow the Banshee Queen into her sacred domain. 

“Consider it, Alleria,” Alexstrasza quietly said, gesturing out to the interior of the sanctum. “This place brought you peace. You are in good health now and you continue to get better at staving off the Void. Think about what I - what _ we _could do for Sylvanas. Think about how we found the Farstrider underneath the tortured soul that had fought demons for a thousand years. Think how we can find your sister underneath the damaged body and soul of the Banshee Queen.” 

Alleria closed her eyes for a moment. She remembered how small, shriveled, and, above all, how _ weak _ Sylvanas had looked when Jaina had carried her to the Spire. It was ironic, almost in a sickening sense, how much it paralleled the way Alexstrasza had carried her into Wyrmrest Temple after her dragonflight had found her in the icy cold mountains that surrounded it. Only she had been rambling in a language she didn’t speak, clawing at Alexstrasza’s arms, trying to lash out with her Void magic that had nearly broken through the dragon’s shielding spells. Then she had fallen into unconsciousness so deep that she had nearly died, if not for the Life-Binder’s healing magic. A shiver went through her body when she realized how eerily similar her own fate had been to Sylvanas’s. The first days after awakening, she had only hoped that she wouldn’t be able to do any more harm to anyone. _ Perhaps it would be wiser to keep Sylvanas in the sanctum than to have her roaming around the Spire, _ Alleria thought. _ At least I’ll be able to stop her if she tries to hurt anyone. _

She turned to Alexstrasza, who was smiling as she looked up to a young dragonling who desperately tried to stay airborne with their developing wings. There was great pride in the Life-Binder’s eyes, and she chuckled softly when the drake fumbled and fell, only to be caught by one of their elder siblings, who was assisting with the flight training. 

“The world will be safe from her,” Alleria said, not able to stop the small smile that graced her lips as the little dragon growled and flapped their wings furiously to get off the ground again. 

“And she will be safe from the world.” Alexstrasza hesitated for a moment, her features turning grave as she faced Alleria. “And the secret will be safe too. My flight is no stranger to keeping them.” 

“I don’t want to force you or your flight to do anything you don’t want, my love.” Alleria felt as thought she had asked so much of them already. She knew that the Life-Binder’s love seemed to have no bounds, but it felt like the Queen and her dragonflight had done more for her than she had deserved. 

“I want to give you the family you deserve, my dearest. And I do believe that it’s possible to do so, as I’ve already helped you find yourself. Of course, I do have a few terms. As you know, there is a strict rule against violence, here in Wyrmrest Temple. I can even put her to work, helping with the rebuilding of the sanctum.” The Life-Binder grasped Alleria’s hands in her own large, warm, and so very reassuring ones. Her golden eyes stood soft and calming, while a small smile tugged at her lips. “What say you, Alleria?” 

~~~

She’d been able to move around on her own, only half due to her stubborn nature. The other half was due to her healing, and with Alleria gone, Vereesa having to head back to check on her boys, and Sylvanas also in the process of healing, Jaina had spent a good deal of her time wandering throughout the Spire.

She’d taken great care to learn which areas to avoid. Alleria’s room seemed to be off limits, as it was entirely destroyed. Jaina couldn’t help but feel that familiar tinge of guilt that always ailed her whenever she happened upon remnants of how the scourge had left Lordaeron and Quel’thalas. There were still parts of Dalaran that she wasn’t able to visit, not after losing Antonidas. So it only took her one glance into the eldest Windrunner sister’s room to know that not only would Alleria not want her to see her room in such a dismal state, but she wouldn’t be able to stand more than a few minutes in there anyway. 

Jaina also dared not even look at the door that led to Lirath’s room. She was all too familiar with the grief that the Windrunner sisters carried from losing him after she and Vereesa had relied on one another in the wake of Theramore’s destruction, and she already knew what the room would look like. Not how it was decorated, naturally, as she knew naught more about the elven boy than that he had golden hair, a kind smile, and a knack for learning any instrument instantly. No, she knew that unless the scourge had ravaged it as well, it would be exactly as he had left it. The bed likely wouldn’t be made and there would be books laying around the room, waiting to be finished. Perhaps his instruments were still usable, waiting for their owner to return and play them. Any laundry he’d left would still be in its impeccably woven basket and archery equipment that his sisters had undoubtedly handed down to him would be gathering dust. No, she’d visited Derek’s room far too many times throughout her teenage years. She knew that only ghosts lived in Lirath’s room.

Instead, Jaina wandered the halls of the Spire, ducking her head into every odd room she happened upon. The lower level was naught more than rubble at this point, held together only by a strong stone base that had stood the tests of both time and the undead. The rooms on the second floor were a gamble, as Alleria’s room and the family room had been robbed of anything of value and now housed broken furniture and dust. She’d already seen Sylvanas and Vereesa’s rooms, and did not need to visit those again. And Jaina dared not touch Lirath’s room.

So she found herself on the third floor, the highest one. This one showed few signs of the scourge’s taint, despite how banshees and a number of remaining undead had roamed the halls until very recently. A wide set of wooden double doors were inscribed with the words _ Minn’da _ and _ Ann’da_. Mother and Father. As she rubbed her thumb over the latter inscription, Jaina found herself incredibly tempted to see how the parents of the Windrunner sisters had lived, but refrained. She knew very little of the two, even after she and Vereesa had grown close, and did not want to break an unspoken trust with one of her closest friends. She pulled her hand away, allowing it to drop down to her side as she glanced at what was left.

There was only one other room on this floor, and its door was ajar. Perhaps the scourge had gotten to one of these upper rooms after all. A moment of hesitation hung in the air, as Jaina was not sure if she could look anymore at what the scourge had done. Something that she could have stopped, had she tried harder. Begged and pleaded more. Tears started to fill her eyes and quickly, Jaina blinked them away with ease, a feat she’d learned after so many years of practice. She’d already cried plenty over Arthas and Stratholme. She need not do so anymore, not in a place that he had already tainted.

Despite her hesitation, a spark of curiosity that lingered from her younger years got the best of her, and Jaina found herself in the doorway within a few seconds. This room… was _ far _ different than anything she could have ever expected. While the rest of the Spire was decorated in a way fit for the high elves, with high, fancy archways, plenty of whites and reds and golds, and enough marble to blind someone, this room was calmer. She could hardly see the walls, as nearly every surface of them was covered with paintings and bookshelves. The wooden shelves were reminiscent of the many that Jaina herself had managed to shove into her room in Boralus, despite her mother’s insistence that she simply use one of the spare rooms in the Keep as a library. Impossibly comfortable couches littered the space as well, holding the same fluffy pillows that Sylvanas’s bed did with mismatching quilts that were large enough to drown her. A game of checkers had been left out on one of the tables, only one move away from completion. Half rotten storage crates were shoved into one of the corners, bringing promise of lost memories. Runes were embedded in the walls, allowing the space to have a constant, soft magelight, as the windows in the room were almost entirely covered by the overflowing shelves.

Instantly, Jaina felt at home. This was no snobbish high elf architecture that she’d been forced to become all too familiar with in her time spent with Kael’thas, but rather a cozy family room that was just meant for the Windrunners. Even so, she didn’t feel out of place. The room reminded her far too much of every single one she had grown up in. Her father’s study, the Proudmoore library, Derek’s room, her own. She could almost smell the sea breeze drifting in, despite how the windows were locked. 

Perhaps the ease and familiarity were why Jaina didn’t notice something slink behind her until two frigid arms wrapped around her waist and a bony chin settled on her shoulder. With a grin in her voice, Sylvanas all but purred against the bottom of her ear. “Enjoying the scenery, Jaina?”

The only things preventing the human from jumping away and sending shards of ice through that already cold body were Sylvanas’s arms, which held Jaina tighter as she practically jumped out of her skin. “Relax,” the banshee chided playfully, the word drawing a sigh from Jaina as she forced herself to calm down. After forcing her still sensitive hands from her hips, Jaina took a step forward and spun to face Sylvanas.

She looked even better than the last time they had spoken, and wore that infuriating smirk that had called out to Jaina to wipe off her face with an ice bolt in Grommash Hold just a few months prior. Still, despite that typical arrogance and swagger that always seemed to accompany the Banshee Queen, there was something a bit more melancholic than usual about Sylvanas. She seemed to hold more of a weight that Jaina had found herself familiar with after spending just one day in the Spire. It was one that Vereesa held as well, that slowly reaccompanied her every time she returned from checking in on her sons and nephew. As such, Jaina ignored it, and gave Sylvanas the best unamused look that she was able to muster. “You’re lucky I didn’t put a hole through your stomach,” she breathed, though her words carried no hint of a threat in them. After giving herself another moment to calm down, she took one more step backwards, to get out of touching range for Sylvanas. 

“_Ah, _don’t step on those,” Sylvanas said, though not unkindly. She gave Jaina a soft push against her shoulder, moving her away from the low table with the game of checkers that stood in front of one of the three couches. The pieces on the board were clearly elvish, despite the game being adopted from the humans, and each piece was carved with delicate engravings of leaves, flowers, curling branches and the occasional arrow. “My father, Aravath Windrunner, was great at checkers. Not even when we were young did he allow us to beat him.” She let out a humorless, dry laugh while lifting a discarded black piece and showing Jaina the rune on the bottom. When she tapped another symbol, embedded in the edge of the board, it lit up. In fact, all the engravings on the pieces started to glow. The white ones blue, the black ones red. So they could be moved with magic to avoid them getting dirty or damaged. Truly something only elves would come up with. The undead placed the piece back on the board, sighing softly. “This game was between Alleria and him. My sister used to be horrible at any kind of game, until she put her head to the task and learned strategies from the Farstriders. For in battle and for these kind of things. Still, the only thing my father had to do to win was move this piece.” 

Jaina glanced down to the white piece that was incredibly close to victory, practically able to feel Alleria’s annoyance radiating back to her from years upon years ago. “What happened to him?” Her voice was soft, not wanting to shatter the carefully crafted atmosphere of the room, nor Sylvanas’s surprising bout of sharing.

“Killed by trolls. Quite some time before the first war, actually.” Sylvanas sounded unaffected by the loss, and when Jaina looked back over to her, she didn’t look to be too upset about it either. Perhaps, she briefly mused, they had never been too close, or perhaps it had been so long since his death that she had come to terms with it. “My mother was devastated. Didn’t leave her room for days,” Sylvanas said, effectively snapping Jaina out of her thoughts as she carelessly flopped back on one of the couches. A cloud of dust burst up, and Sylvanas regarded it with a cool, bored expression. “Alleria and I had to catch all of the food, cook all of the meals, and take care of Vereesa and Lirath. Eventually, she and I got so fed up with it that we marched into her room and demanded she do her job.”

With that, she reached forward to move one of the white pieces that held the remaining black one in captivity. The moment she laid her finger on it, however, the glowing blue engravings flared brighter. The grip Jaina had on her staff only grew tighter as a deep, booming voice seemed to radiate out from the walls themselves. 

_ “Alleria, don’t you dare!” _The voice’s tone was joking and Jaina could hear a smile in his voice, one that she had been all too familiar with growing up. Briefly, her chest ached as she missed her own father, and her eyes flickered to Sylvanas’s face. 

There was still little emotion on the undead’s features. “That’s him,” she said, pointing to the wall behind her with a careless gesture. 

In between the smaller paintings of landscapes, a very stern depiction of Lireesa Windrunner in her ceremonial armour, the Windrunner family tree, and an odd painting that only consisted of several handprints in various colours and various sizes, a huge family portrait hung. The magelights cast shadows onto it until Sylvanas waved her hand. Despite the state of the Spire, its magic still reacted to the whims of its owners. The lights shifted, allowing Jaina to better see the slightly faded portrait. There were numerous portraits of her own family strewn around Proudmoore Keep, so she knew the artistic process behind them well enough. Yet that didn’t prepare her for the artwork. 

As often with elvish families, the painting was centered around the matriarch. In this case, that was Lireesa Windrunner, who sat in a broad leather armchair in her full Ranger-General attire. Her bow rested against the side of the chair, her quiver lay on the ground beside it. To her right stood a broad-shouldered elven man, who had light brown hair and a goatee that seemed to be the longest beard any elf was able to grow. His eyes were golden, seeming to glow softly, though it was only a trick of the paint’s shading. While Lireesa stared straight ahead, her lips a thin line, Aravath Windrunner had a subtle smile on his face. 

In front of him and a little to the right, Alleria stood. She wore the green leathers of a Farstrider and leaned slightly on her bow. Her golden hair flowed free, not constricted by tight braids and armor, and it looked as though she had yet to receive any of her tattoos. A cocky grin painted her face and it looked like she could barely contain her laughter. But most of all, she looked happy. Not angry, not frustrated, not even remotely annoyed as she seemed so keen nowadays to look. One of her eyebrows was slightly updrawn, as if she challenged the stuffy family painting, or its viewers. 

Little Vereesa sat on her mother’s left knee. She was clad in the simple brown and dark green ranger trainee’s armour, but managed to look dainty all the same. Clearly no older than the human equivalent of eight, though Jaina wasn’t entirely sure how that translated to a high elf. A band of purple flowers held her silvery hair out of her face. Jaina briefly wondered if they had a symbolic meaning. Vereesa’s smile was the sweetest of the entire painting, her blue eyes wide and innocent. Jaina felt a pleasant warmth in her chest to see her hold her mother’s hand in her own. Yet all of the peace and prosperity that the painting projected into the room could not prepare Jaina for who stood to Lireesa’s left. 

Sylvanas. Sylvanas, in the blue garb of a ranger lieutenant. Sylvanas with a crooked grin on her face that pulled the left corner of her mouth up higher than the right. A grin that drew little dimples in her cheeks and showed hints of the fangs that had not too long ago buried themselves in Jaina’s chest. Her silver eyes were bright, filled with bravery, pride, and adventure. Her stance was relaxed, yet still strong and steadfast. She was the complete opposite of the Banshee Queen that Jaina had found dying in Grommash Hold. Yet she still had the same narrow face, with a chin that wasn’t as rounded as Vereesa’s and cheeks less full than Alleria’s. She still had her mother’s strong nose and her father’s thinner lips. 

“That… that’s you,” Jaina stammered, unable to suppress the surprise in her voice. She looked closer at the painting, frowning. “And you’re holding something? Is that a cloak?” 

Sylvanas turned to her with a scorching glare. “That would be Lirath, one summer old, wrapped in a red blanket. You can see his ears stick out at the top.” 

“Oh. I thought those were your fingers.” 

“He’s pictured like that because he started wailing when the artist was halfway done with her sketch. My mother didn’t want a crying baby in her expensive portrait so she simply turned him around in my arms and had him cry into my ear instead of at the artist. Which is why I’m grimacing like that… and also why Alleria has such an insufferable smile on her face.” 

“You’re not grimacing,” Jaina said, before she was well aware of it. “You’re laughing!” She found herself smiling a bit as well, studying all of their faces a bit more now that she was aware of the context behind the scene. Alleria definitely did look as though she was laughing at Sylvanas’s plight, while Vereesa simply seemed to be enjoying a moment with her entire family. Upon closer inspection, Aravath’s smile came off as more of a _ smirk_, as though he had just cracked the funniest joke in the world and his eldest daughter certainly seemed to think so. Despite her insistence otherwise, Sylvanas did seem happy. Perhaps the joke had been at her expense and while she was slightly annoyed, she appreciated her father’s humor. 

“I’m sure it seems that way.” With that, the conversation was over, and Sylvanas fluidly got up from the couch and made her way over to the storage crates that lined the wall on the opposite side of the room. Casually she picked a few up, one at a time, and spared only a glance into each one before casting them aside. Finally she found the one she seemed to have been looking for, and brought it back to where she’d been sitting before opening it. 

“More portraits?” Jaina asked, a soft frown hardening her features ever so slightly. The entire box seemed to be filled with canvases that held rather… crude attempts of the Windrunner family. One of Lireesa holding Vereesa and Lirath in one arm each. One of Sylvanas and Alleria arm wrestling. One of Vereesa and Sylvanas curled under a quilt on the patio, watching the stars and the moon twinkle above. None of the drawings were particularly good, and some even made the family seem… not humanoid in a sense. She almost burst into laughter at a picture of Lirath when he was just a toddler, as he looked like an odd mixture of a baby and a grown man.

Sylvanas simply set all of those aside, continuing to sort through the portraits. They got better and better the further along she went, though never quite to a professional level, and Sylvanas only stopped when she reached the last one.

The anatomy was far better, though it was very poorly shaded. Still, Jaina could _ see _ the time and love put into it, despite the fact that it wasn’t entirely finished. Fireworks blossomed in the night sky, most colored in every shade in the rainbow while a few were still white areas. Stars dotted the dark sky, and beneath it sat four elves watching the firework show. It took a moment for Jaina to recognize them from their outlines alone, but the distinct earrings that hung from the tallest elf’s ears and the attempt of a pale glow from the hair of two of the other elves told her all she needed to know. This was, naturally, a portrait of the Windrunner siblings. 

Lirath was taller now, no longer a baby but not nearly as mature as his sisters. He sat to Alleria’s left, who was next to Sylvanas. Vereesa sat on the very right end, leaning ever so slightly on the middle sister.

“The fireworks were to celebrate King Anasterian Sunstrider’s birthday. It wasn’t an annual event, as that would have been… excessive, and even he knew it. Instead he celebrated every ten years, to still be above the common folk.” Sylvanas smirked, letting out a huff of a laugh. “Kael’thas loathed it. I’m sure you’re aware that, as used to royal living as he was, he despised when people actually acknowledged it. Yet he was _ all _ too fond of using the privilege that came with being prince as often as he possibly could. Especially in his attempts to court me.” The last sentence was slightly quieter, muttered with far more scorn than the ones prior.

“Regardless, Lirath and Vereesa absolutely insisted on watching the fireworks that year, as we were quickly approaching Lirath’s birthday and he had always been far too keen on celebrating early. Alleria insisted I join, despite my prior plans to hunt with Lor’themar that evening, so I was forced to cancel and endure the show.” Sylvanas paused for a moment, her lips quirking up for form the smallest of smiles. “And I do mean forced. Lirath and Vereesa were hanging from one arm each, as though I was some sort of tree that they were attempting to climb, while Alleria blocked my door. I was fully prepared, mind you, to endure my hunt with them hanging from me, if only to build my muscle. Alleria used to do so all the time when Vereesa and I would hang from her.”

“Why didn’t you?” Jaina had since taken a seat on the same couch that Sylvanas reclined on, too tired to remain standing for much longer after having explored the vast majority of the Spire. Despite her clear exhaustion, she looked curious, intrigued by Sylvanas’s tale and by the happenings of the young Windrunners.

“Vereesa, once upon a time the clear favorite of my siblings, used her damned puppy-dog eyes to her favor to guilt me into staying.” If she noticed how entranced Jaina was, she didn’t say anything, instead continuing to speak of her younger and living days. “So I did. I had to cancel on Lor’themar, _ and _ tell him that it was due to the fireworks that we’d seen so many times in our lives.” Jaina couldn’t help but smile, already imagining how the man would have teased Sylvanas for that. “I suppose it wasn’t fully intolerable, however. My father absolutely insisted that we briefly pose for his… _ art_, so we did have to sit still for quite some time while he sketched. Afterwards, he and _ Minn’da _ went back inside, and the four of us migrated from this terribly uncomfortable pose into something a bit more comfortable.

“Alleria immediately stole the patio sofa and reclined back on it, not leaving enough room for the rest of us to sit. Lirath, however, hardly cared, and laid on top of her. Vereesa and I remained on the floor, and while I leaned back against the legs of the sofa, she sat between my legs and rested against me.” Sylvanas glanced up above Jaina’s head, making the mage glance to where her gaze had rested. There was nothing there but the wall, however, and she turned back to watch Sylvanas’s face. “We stayed like that for hours. Eventually, our parents came out to get us to come to bed, but we were able to talk them out of it. We were, after all, on our _ very _ best behavior.”

Jaina let out a soft laugh, more a huff than anything else. That drew Sylvanas’s attention back down, her eyes immediately falling to the mage’s upturned lips before looking at her face as a whole. “Tandred and I used to do the same thing, both to our parents and to Derek. We had quite the age gap growing up, though… I suppose elves would have a bit more.”

Sylvanas hummed in confirmation. “Alleria is seventy-three years older than I.”

“Seventy- Tides. I suppose our age gap _ couldn’t _ have been that drastic, given that our mother isn’t that old. Tandred is six years younger than me, and Derek was-” Jaina paused a moment, catching herself. She frowned softly, her eyes suddenly averting Sylvanas’s. “- _ is _ eleven years my senior. I can’t count the number of times I curled up in his bed to read, and was ‘too comfortable’ to leave when my bedtime came. Tandred used to pull the same thing with me, though he never was one to read. Instead, he found my bed far more comfortable than his own.”

“The plights of being an older sister,” Sylvanas dryly commented, though her own lips quirked upwards. “It’s truly a never ending cycle. I slept in Alleria’s bed because my room was too large and looming for me to comfortably sleep. Vereesa slept in my room whenever it stormed, meaning she practically moved in there in the summertime. Lirath slept in Alleria’s room as well, though I suspect that it wasn’t due to any fear, given how often I could hear them practicing on their damned flutes.”

Jaina’s smile only grew, and briefly she wished that she’d had more in common with her brothers than simply loving the ocean and, with Derek specifically, reading. It seemed as though all of the Windrunners, as much as they may have gotten on one another’s nerves, connected so well years ago. “That’s sweet.”

“Sweet is certainly one word that could be used,” Sylvanas grumbled, though any anger or frustration that she once held over the issue had long since evaporated. “Though sweet was certainly _ not _ the word I was using when it was well past midnight and those two were keeping me awake with their truly horrid playing, and I had a test to prove my archery skills not six hours away.”

“At least you didn’t once fail a very important exam because someone decided to eat far too many sweets before bedtime and was absolutely insistent on playing with you until four in the morning.”

Sylvanas chuckled. “I’m sure you did perfectly fine on the exam.”

“Oh, no, I did that to Derek.” That managed to pull a longer laugh from Sylvanas, one that brought a smile to her lips rather than the smirk or cocky grin that Jaina had become so familiar with. 

They sat in silence for a minute, both allowing themselves a moment to take in all that the other had said. Jaina found herself rather surprised, in all honesty, that Sylvanas had been so… open with her. While she knew that Sylvanas had few else, if any at all, to talk to, she hadn’t expected the banshee to speak of her past life with anyone. “Why’d you tell me this?” She asked after a moment, surprising herself with the question. 

There was another pregnant pause, in which Sylvanas glanced over to her with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not entirely sure,” she admitted, keeping her uninterested poise above all else. Still, the hesitation before her response told Jaina that she _ had _ thought about it. She took a moment, considering what she should say in response, or if she should at all, before the heavy door to the room swung open and a red in the face, very winded Vereesa barged in. 

“Sylvanas.” She shoved the door a bit further open, propping it so it would stay open instead of shutting behind her. “And Jaina! I didn’t know you two would be up here.” She stood panting in the door opening for a few more moments, before holding out a small letter to Jaina. “This was awaiting me when I returned from my boys. I assume that Alleria wrote this to me in the morning, but I would have no way of-” She stopped, cutting herself off at Sylvanas’s unamused glance and raised eyebrow. “Right. _ ‘I’ll be bringing a guest to Windrunner Spire this afternoon. Be there.’ _ Do you two have any idea who or why..?” 

“She wrote this in the morning, you said? It’s afternoon now, why are you so late?” Sylvanas inquired, leaning forward ever so slightly and snatching the note from her sister’s hand to inspect it. 

Vereesa’s face turned even redder. “I only saw it a few minutes ago. My boys were keeping me busy, near begging me to play with them after having spent so long away from home. But… do you have any idea who she is going to bring with her?” 

“It can’t be good,” Sylvanas said, hastily waving her hand so the magelights shift and cast shadows over the family portrait in the back of the room. Jaina could see the question “was I interrupting something?” on Vereesa’s lips, but the youngest Windrunner sister thankfully chose to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t look at the portrait either, only awkwardly shuffling on her feet for a few moments. 

Then suddenly, the hairs on Jaina’s neck stood on end. She grasped around her for support, finding it in Sylvanas’s cold shoulder. All her senses were reeling from the wave of energy that had washed over the Spire, something that usually would not bother her as much but seemed overwhelming now that she was so much weaker. From their perked up ears, Jaina could see that both Windrunners had felt it too, but perhaps not quite as strongly, as they weren’t mages. 

“Someone just ported in,” Jaina dryly concluded, quickly letting go of Sylvanas and steadying herself. 

“Alleria?” Vereesa inquired, stretching out a helping hand to stop Jaina from wobbling. Immediately, Jaina’s hand left Sylvanas’s shoulder.

“No, definitely not. This felt like arcane energy, not the Void’s.” 

“Then I should hide myself. If the Alliance is here, at least they will have to tear down the entire Spire before they find me.” Sylvanas was already on her way to the door when a loud thump outside the building made her stop in her tracks. 

As quickly as she could, Jaina hurried towards the window, pushing aside the heavy red curtains to take a look. If Anduin and his army were really here, she probably wouldn’t be able to explain her own presence either. But it wasn’t Anduin who had arrived by the Spire, nor was it an army. In the clearing in front of the Windrunner’s home stood an enormous red dragon, whose head came up to the windows of the first floor, even though she was crouching. Her four horns were large, each one easily twice Jaina’s size, and adorned with heavy golden rings with greenish gems. Her scales, shimmering with every move, were a vibrant red, and despite the sharpness of the end of her tail and how her massive claws dug into the brittle grass beneath them, she looked kind. Soft, in a way. Dragon Queen Alexstrasza had arrived.

Alleria looked very small as she sat in between the ridges on the back of the Life-Binder’s head. She also looked very disgruntled, pulling an even more disapproving face than the one Jaina had seen her wear when barging into Proudmoore Keep. Still, when Alexstrasza shook her head so the elf very nearly fell off, she took a deep breath and hollered at the top of her lungs: “_Sylvanas! _” 

~~~

So, the rumours appeared to be true. Alleria was indeed the Life-Binder’s lover. And the both of them were now standing in front of Windrunner Spire. The entire situation was so ridiculous than Sylvanas felt the urge to burst into laughter, but she kept her face schooled into neutrality. Outside, Alleria had dismounted, pacing around in the grass while Alexstrasza folded her wings and sat down, resting her head on her talons. Sylvanas had no doubts that the dragon had seen her. 

“Sylvanas! Hurry up, Belore’s sake!” Alleria yelled. “I haven’t come back here for nothing.” 

“Calm down, my beloved,” the rich, warm voice of the Life-Binder sounded over the terrace. “She was all the way up on the third floor.” 

Before she had even exited the living room, Sylvanas felt it. She felt the aura of life-giving magic that Alexstrasza brought with her. She felt it flare briefly, then lessen, as the dragon changed to her human form. Yet still, it lingered in the air, like a cloying presence, tingling on her skin. It didn’t hurt, but it was much more obvious in places where scars marred her body. The big, deep scar that cleaved her abdomen was made especially sensitive by whatever powers the dragon queen spread around her, and Sylvanas grimaced as it crept into her hands too. The skin there was smooth as a newborn’s and free of her archer’s callouses from years of training, only possessing a fine web of scars where the skin had knitted together as she drank Jaina’s blood. She felt highly uncomfortable and for a brief moment, fear threatening to overtake her. It was as if a stronger wave of the magic that Alexstrasza possessed could wipe her out entirely, make her crumble and disintegrate at once. 

_ This isn’t the Light’s energy_, Sylvanas reminded herself. She had nothing to fear from Alleria and her pet dragon. Yet still, when she finally reached the terrace and faced the Life-Binder, she felt very, very small. 

Despite presenting in her humanoid form, Alexstrasza truly towered over her, her body nearly a head taller and her horns only causing her to loom more. She wore no armour, but layers of rich red and brownish cloth that left nearly no skin bared. A cape with a thick collar of white fur adorned her form, trailing behind her as she took a few steps in Sylvanas’s direction. With her, the aura of life energy moved, like an invisible cloud, pressing ever so slightly onto Sylvanas. It felt alien to her. Or perhaps, she was the unusual presence, the abomination amongst the life. The Life-Binder’s face was kind, a subtle, warm smile on her lips. Then a minuscule frown crossed her brow and her mouth fell open in a small, silent “oh”. 

“Your hands,” she said, reaching out with her own. 

Sylvanas hadn’t even noticed that she had hidden her hands behind her back, clenching them to tight fists. At Alexstrasza’s beckoning, she found that she could to little else than to reveal them. Instantly, the Life-Binder grasped her right hand in hers, gently relaxing the tensed muscles and inspecting the spiderweb of thin, white scars that covered the palm. Sylvanas couldn’t prevent a soft, pained noise from escaping her mouth when the dragon’s large, warm fingers pressed down where her fingers began. 

“These were… healed, with the blood of another -” there was hesitation on the term that the Life-Binder picked for what Sylvanas had done. “ - not too long ago. They must be sensitive still.” 

“They are.” Sylvanas hastily snatched her hand back, hissing in slight pain and she removed it a bit too forcefully from the dragon’s warm grip. Where Alexstrasza had held her hand, reddish spots were already showing, not bruises, but not far from it either. Sylvanas hated feeling so frail, and the Life-Binder’s height and natural strength were not helping. 

Alexstrasza moved her cape aside, drawing a short, richly decorated dagger from her belt. “Then allow me to help you,” she said, grasping her cloak and cutting several strips of fabric from the underside. She gathered them in her hand and held them out to Sylvanas. 

When she had been a ranger recruit, Sylvanas had long since learned to wrap something around her knuckles when sparring. It absorbed the impact when she landed a blow and made sure that her palms weren’t scratched up after training. To her surprise, Alexstrasza didn’t let her wrap her own hands. Instead, after she had grabbed a ribbon of the thick, oddly soft fabric, the Life-Binder nodded contently and took Sylvanas’ free hand, beginning with a few wraps around the sensitive palm. The banshee jerked her hand, but strangely couldn’t find the strength, or even the will, to pull away. 

Around them, Vereesa had retrieved the small, dented kettle, filled it with water and lit a fire on the terrace. Alleria was emptying the knapsack that she had brought along from Wyrmrest Temple, placing sweet bread, cured meats and a selection of fruits on the ground. She threw a small leather pouch in Vereesa’s direction. With a squeal of delight, Vereesa unpacked it to find her favourite kind of Pandarian tea. Jaina, seemingly also very pleased by the tea choice, joined the two sisters, sitting down and crossing her legs. 

All the while, Alexstrasza wrapped the strips she had cut from her cape around Sylvanas’s tender hands with utmost care. Only when she had ensured that only Sylvanas’s fingers are uncovered, did she join the others by the fire on the terrace. Sylvanas followed her, slowly flexing her hands and discovering that there truly was no more discomfort when she curled them into tight fists. When she leaned on one of her hands while sitting down next to Jaina, though with twice as much distance between her and the woman than between Jaina and Vereesa, the pressure didn’t feel uncomfortable. 

“Why did you come back, Alleria?” She asked her older sister, who seemed to be more focused on seeing how many slices of dried sausage she could pile on a chunk of bread. 

“This place isn’t safe for you, Sylvanas,” she said, before taking a large bite out of her creation. “What if Lor’themar decides he wants to come here to… I don’t know, rehabilitate the remaining banshees? I think the new pacts would allow for that. Or what if a random loyalist Forsaken would suddenly turn up, wanting to pay respect to their clearly stabbed to death leader? What if you were creeping around outside or staring at that dumb portrait upstairs and didn’t notice them?” 

After shooting a scorching glare at Vereesa, who had obviously told Alleria about what she and Jaina had been doing before a literal dragon arrived, Sylvanas sighed. She wished that she could still remember what honey bread with cured sausage smelled and tasted like. Or, better yet, smell and taste it herself. If she tried now, it would taste like nothing more than sandpaper. “Well, do you have a good alternative, sister mine? I can hardly stay anywhere else without being noticed.” 

Alleria mumbled something unintelligible, her mouth stuffed full with food. Then she gestured in Alexstrasza’s direction. The dragon laughed warmly. “Still recovering, my dear? You know that eating calmly is much better for you than so rapidly,” she said, causing Alleria’s ears to flush bright red. “Regardless, Alleria is correct. Windrunner Spire is hardly suitable for a long stay, especially for you, Sylvanas. Anyone could come here and discover you. With the recent peaceful developments, I don’t think that it would be a good idea to reveal your presence so brusquely. In due time, yes, but not now.” 

Sylvanas did not like the prospect of being revealed _ in due time_, nor at all, but before she could speak, Jaina opened her mouth. 

“So you are planning to take her to Wyrmrest Temple?” 

“Ah, he did always say that you were clever, Lady Jaina,” Alexstrasza said with a smile, though it quickly disappeared from her lips when Jaina made a particularly sour face. “My apologies, I did not mean to bring up any painful memories.” 

“It’s fine,” Jaina mumbled, though the subtle look in her eyes told Sylvanas that it was absolutely not fine. She had not forgotten about how coldly the blue dragon had cast her aside. “And please, just call me Jaina. I hardly feel like a lady anymore… with all I’ve done and this rather elaborate secret I’m protecting.” 

“Then I offer to take some of that weight off your shoulders, Jaina.” With those words, Alexstrasza fully turned to Sylvanas. Even when sitting down, the Life-Binder seemed larger than life, still looming over the rest of them. Sylvanas found herself straightening her back the slightest bit, if only to not feel so small compared to the dragon. “You will stay with me in Wyrmrest Temple,” she said, now directing her words to Sylvanas specifically. “You will have your own living quarters and access to a great deal of what the Temple has to offer. I can offer you my protection as well. Your survival will remain a secret until you explicitly state that you are ready to reveal it to the rest of Azeroth.” It was Alleria’s turn to make a sour face, but she did not say anything in retaliation. “Should anyone come for your life, I will ensure your safety.”

Sylvanas raised a pale eyebrow. “While I’m grateful for your offer, I suspect that this will not be entirely one-sided. What do you want from me?”

Alexstrasza’s lips quirked upwards, seemingly unaffected by Sylvanas’s rather cold nature. “If you’re insinuating that I require some sort of information or favour, Lady Windrunner, you’d be mistaken. There are terms to your stay, naturally, though those are quite simple and no more than a few reasonable things that I would expect from anyone who stays in my sanctum for an extended period of time. 

“Due to our duties as the Red Dragonflight, there is a strict rule against violence in Wyrmrest Temple. The peace has been disturbed often enough already, and we are still reeling from the damage brought by Deathwing. If you decide to take me up on my offer, you will help my flight with the rebuilding and restoration of the inner sanctum, the cleaning of the eggs, and rearing of our dragonlings. You might be assigned to do other chores. This is what I ask of you in exchange for your stay.” 

“Chores,” Sylvanas dryly repeated, her expression not changing from the dry one she so often held. “Am I a child to you, _ Life-Binder_?”

A sigh of disapproval came simultaneously from Alleria and Jaina, though the mage did not allow Alleria a chance to speak, much to Sylvanas’s eternal relief. “I still do chores around Proudmoore Keep, you know. It’s just a part of living there.”

“You don’t have servants?” Once more, Sylvanas’s tone was the slightest bit friendlier with Jaina than with anyone else, and briefly she considered schooling herself into her typical decisive distrust. 

“I do, but they are servants, not slaves,” Jaina said, before taking a small sip of her tea. Alleria had brought some cups from Wyrmrest Temple as well, which were much better to drink out of than the bowls they had been using the days prior. “There’s nothing wrong with doing a bit of work around the place, here and there. Especially if you get the protection from a literal flight of dragons in return for it.” 

The mage had a solid point that even Sylvanas could not deny. She nodded her head in agreement, casting a silent glance in Jaina’s direction. Jaina gave her a slight smile in return. 

“Then I accept your offer, Life-Binder.” Sylvanas lifted her head to look Alexstrasza in the eyes, only to be met by the dragon queen’s friendly bronze gaze that quickly made her look away. She didn’t miss the disapproving groan that came from Alleria, though. A short glare in her sister’s direction was met with a similarly dark look. However, Alleria’s face soon relaxed as Alexstrasza laid a hand on her arm. 

“I am glad, Sylvanas. Very relieved too, since Alleria told me that Vereesa and Jaina were all very worried for your safety.” Much confirming nodding from Vereesa and a small chuckle from Jaina followed, met by a deep sigh from Alleria. 

When Sylvanas asked when she could leave for Wyrmrest Temple, Alleria rolled her eyes. After swallowing a large bite of bread, she said: “Right now, if you want to. We flew here from Wyrmrest, so it’s just as easy to go back. In a moment, though. I’d like to finish my meal.” 

“Then I will start… packing.” Abruptly, Sylvanas stood up. It was becoming increasingly hard for her to remain seated, having to watch her sisters, Jaina, and Alexstrasza enjoy one of the many simple pleasures of _ life:_ eating. 

So she found herself in her room again. The bed still held an indent from where Jaina had slept, the blankets were a complete mess, so much so that Sylvanas took the time to straighten them and tuck one end under the mattress. Then she sat down on the bed and looked around her room. While scanning the space, it occurred to her how few possessions she had, since everything that she had kept in Grommash Hold had most likely been destroyed. Her eyes fell on the bow that hung on the wall. Her very first bow, given to her at the start of her ranger training. She stood up and traced a careful finger through the dust that covered the wood with a thick layer of grey. It was still as smooth as it had been when she still lived, as she had always taken great care to oil and polish the weapon. But the no-violence rule of the Ruby Sanctum prevented her from bringing it with her. 

A few books littered the desk. Bundles with poetry, a small book on how to care for your pet dragonhawk, a collection of legends and myths, a bestiary, a guide to the herbs and plants of Kalimdor. Nothing that she wished to read anymore. The cup with runes embedded into its wood piqued her interest more than anything else in the room. As she grasped it and traced the inscriptions, she remembered the Fire Festival where she had bought it. Admittedly, it had been a gimmick item, something that she could show to her fellow ranger trainees. Even though Sylvanas had no use for beverage-warming cups now, she wanted to take it with her, purely for the sake of the memories. 

In the broken closet, she found a leather shoulder bag, still sturdy after years of disuse. To retrieve it, she had to step into the closet with one leg and reach into a corner. While backing out of the closet again, the bag bumped into something else, stashed away in the same corner. It fell in the direction of the door, onto Sylvanas’s head. After getting the bag out, she retrieved the other thing too, muttering curses under her breath. Clearly, her body wasn’t back to its pre-stabbing ambush elegance. It appeared to be a staff of sorts. A long, straight wooden rod, engraved with delicate carvings and embedded with several pieces of coloured glass. Sylvanas had to think for a few moments about its origins. 

Before Vereesa had been born, the Windrunner family had gone on a holiday to the lands around Lordaeron. Lireesa and Aravath, with Alleria and Sylvanas. There, Sylvanas, who was no more than ten years old at the time, had seen the staff at a woodcarver’s stand on a market. She had subsequently begged her parents to buy it, despite having absolutely no use for it. For the rest of the holiday, she had walked around with a walking staff, twice as tall as herself. After the holiday, it had never left the closet again, except maybe once or twice, to be used in a play fight with her sisters. 

The carved wood felt extremely pleasant under her fingers, smooth and oddly soft. With those meager two belongings, Sylvanas made her way downstairs again. There, Vereesa and Jaina were embracing each other, clearly saying their goodbyes. Jaina promised that she would come over to Dalaran soon, to visit Vereesa and the twins. The woman sounded as if she was nearly in tears. Her sentimental display was only topped by Vereesa’s even more emotional promise that she and her children would instead make the journey to Boralus, as to not exhaust Jaina. Alleria stood to the side while Alexstrasza said that all of them were welcome in Wyrmrest Temple at all times. The dragon queen even suggested that the entire Windrunner family and Jaina could come over once, for a family day of sorts. 

Sylvanas on her part thought that that was an extremely bad idea, but didn’t voice anything. It would be hard to have to endure Vereesa’s barely concealed sobbing, when she rejected the idea. She was so caught up in her disgust at having a family day with her entire extended family that she only noticed that Jaina was walking up to her when the mage’s footsteps sounded loudly on the stone of the terrace. 

“Sylvanas, I… I hope that you will find your place, at Wymrest Temple,” the mage softly said, grasping Sylvanas’s lower arms. It wasn’t a hug, it was barely a handshake, but it felt nearly too intimate for Sylvanas to endure, especially because Jaina was standing about four inches from her face. “I hope that you can find peace there. And… may I visit you, from time to time? I would like to see how your recovery proceeds.” 

“Yes, you may. Of course, you may,” Sylvanas said quietly, bringing her wrapped hands to Jaina’s own arms and squeezing softly. “I am… I - You have done much for me, Jaina. Thank you,” she hastily said, letting go of the mage and taking a few steps back. 

Yet before she could retreat to where Alexstrasza and Alleria stood, Vereesa tackled her in a hug, clasping her arms around Sylvanas. If she breathed, she would have been choked. Last time they had hugged, Sylvanas had been wearing her armour, but now, in the thin clothing that they had dug up from the Spire, she could feel the frantic pulse of Vereesa’s heart, her racing breath and her shaking arms. Rather quickly, she shrugged off her younger sister, who looked at her with hurt, tear-filled eyes before backing away. “Don’t do that again,” Sylvanas hissed, prompting a stuttered apology from Vereesa.

Through said pathetic sniffling, Alleria loudly cleared her throat. “Time to go, ‘Nas," she said. "Back up on the terrace a bit, Alexstrasza has to have enough room to shift.”

With the same rush of magic, that once again made the scars on Sylvanas’s body tingle unpleasantly, the Life-Binder shifted into her true form. She reared up on her hind legs, slamming her claws into the ground with a thunderous sound as she landed. A small puff of smoke burst out of her nostrils at a loud exhale. Alleria grabbed one of her huge horns and swung herself onto her neck, snugly sitting just behind the horns. With some hesitation, Sylvanas followed, holding onto Alexstrasza’s scales as she got onto the dragon’s back. After a few seconds of fumbling, since she was holding her staff in her right hand, she felt Alexstrasza’s talon coming up beneath her feet and giving her the final push upwards. 

"Touch me and I’ll throw you off, no matter how high up we’re flying,” Alleria warned, prompting a grumble from Alexstrasza. The sound reverberated through the dragon’s body, so Sylvanas could feel the tremors in her legs and arms. 

With a few mighty wing strokes, they were off the ground. While Sylvanas had flown before, even in her banshee form, this ascent was much, much faster. Before she realized it, they were flying a small circle around the highest part of Windrunner Spire, while Vereesa and Jaina waved at them on the ground below. Then they flew out to sea, though not far, to avoid being spotted. Without much of a warning, Alexstrasza dove, the waves approaching at breakneck speed. Then the air ripped open with arcane, making Sylvanas’s skin tingle from the tips of her ears to her toes. 

Instead of crashing into the water, they appeared above Wyrmrest Temple through the portal that the Life-Binder had cast. Spreading her wings, she slowed down enough to make the landing only slightly rough. There appeared to be a snowstorm, howling around the temple. Alleria quickly pulled her hood over her face and jumped off of the dragon’s back. Alexstrasza crouched, making it much easier for Sylvanas to dismount. Instinctively, Sylvanas reached for her own hood, to avoid getting snow into her eyes. But the tunic she wore had no such thing, so she was left to hold her hair out of her face with her free hand. 

Though she could not feel much of the warmth on her skin, she sensed that the interior of Wyrmrest Temple was decidedly warmer than the freezing landscape of Northrend. Neither Alleria nor Alexstrasza paused for long, quickly walking through the numerous corridors to the Chamber of the Aspects. There they also did not stop, so Sylvanas quickly tore her eyes away from the Chamber’s architecture, to see Alexstrasza wave her hand at the two drakonid who guarded the portal to the Ruby Sanctum. They lifted their crossed spears and bowed for their queen, after which they gave access to the Sanctum. 

Alleria had disappeared as soon as Sylvanas had set foot through the portal that separated the Chamber of the Aspects and the Ruby Sanctum. This left Sylvanas alone with the Life-Binder, who, to her horror, brought a large, heavy hand up to the small of her back and gently steered her in the direction of the house that stood in the middle of the sanctum. Curiously enough it appeared to have only one floor, unlike some of the other buildings in the sanctum. It was rather high, though, with architecture that looked ancient even to Sylvanas. Tall pillars held up the triangular front of the building, like the temples that adorned some ancient areas in Kalimdor. The other buildings were built much more squarely, though each of them had details that looked as if they were specifically made for one person. 

“Those are the residences of my flight. To the left, further away from the portal, we have storage houses, training grounds, gardens and orchards. In the mountains surrounding our little enclave, there are hot springs and of course, our hatchery,” Alexstrasza said, confirming Sylvanas’s suspicion. “You will meet most of the flight tomorrow. Then I will also give you a full tour of the Ruby Sanctum. For now, however, it is most important that you rest well.” 

With that, she led Sylvanas into her home, ignoring a baffled look of a rather bulky member of the dragonflight, who stood on the patio and stared at them in surprise. “Mother -” she started. “Why have -” 

“Tomorrow we will gather everyone, Torastrasza, as I said this morning. Let’s not strain our guest too much.” 

The other dragon departed with a huff, straightening her shoulders and marching into the sanctum. She gave Sylvanas a disgusted look, prompting the elf to ask who exactly she was. 

“Torastrasza is one of my elder daughters. She is my right hand, leader of the guard in the Temple and she oversees all military tasks for the flight. She can be a bit guarded, I admit.” While leading Sylvanas through a number of corridors, since the house was most certainly bigger than it looked from the outside, Alexstrasza smiled warmly. “Yes, my children are quite the varied bunch, as you will see soon enough.” 

“And why did she carry a large sword? I thought there was a rule against violence here," Sylvanas snapped. 

Her tone didn’t have any impact on the Life-Binder, who took a right turn and continued to guide Sylvanas through a hallway with several large doors on either side. “The guards are an exception, naturally. All members of my flight have to know how to defend themselves, hence why we have a weapon storage as well as a training program for the younglings. But unless we are attacked or someone calls for our aid in battle, any form of violence - be it magical or physical - is strictly forbidden. Now… this will be your room for however long you want to stay here. I do hope it’s spacious enough.” 

In the middle of the hall, Alexstrasza opened a door, motioning for Sylvanas to enter. “There is an adjoining bathroom, fresh clothing in the closet, I selected some books that I thought you would like and put them on the shelf for you. A desk with writing supplies is also present. If you want anything else, you only need to tell me. And you can always ask me to rotate the view from the window to show a different part of the landscape around the temple. I put some spells into place so you can see a more interesting view from your window than the inside of the sanctum. Alleria and I have that as well, in our bedroom.” 

Sylvanas couldn’t remember the last time that someone took care to prepare a room for her. She had trouble keeping her face neutral as she put her meager luggage down beside the desk, slowly walked up to the bed and sat down. It was by far the softest bed she had felt in years, with more blankets than she had seen in years and a mountain of pillows to rival her hoard in the Spire. The room looked so very homely, entirely painted in warm red and brown tints, with wooden cabinets and lamps that give off a soft yellow light. There were dragons engraved in the bedframe and embroidered onto the closed curtains. She was still staring at the interior when Alexstrasza spoke up again. 

“Do you usually sleep fully clothed, Sylvanas?” 

“Undead don’t sleep,” Sylvanas said with practiced monotony. No matter how soft the sheets felt underneath her wrapped palms, she knew that she would forever be deprived of true rest. 

“They usually do not, indeed. But I think you will find that my powers are unlike anything you’ve seen before.” As the Life-Binder came closer to the bed, Sylvanas felt the urge to stand up to at least try to match her height. But to her surprise, Alexstrasza knelt beside the bed, now eye level with her. “If you wish to sleep, you can. I know a spell that would allow you to do so. There is a nightgown in the dresser, and a nightshirt and trousers too, if you prefer those, as Alleria does.” 

Sylvanas could not form words for a few moments. Briefly, she considered denying. She considered standing up and abruptly leaving the presence of this woman, regardless of the odd comfort she brought, and simply going back to Windrunner Spire to wallow in misery. That was far more painful than this, naturally, but above all else, Sylvanas was a prideful and stubborn woman. For a few moments she sat on the bed, looking into the Life-Binder’s kind eyes and trying to say something, but failing. Eventually, she just nodded quietly, licking her drier than normal lips. No one else was around to see how utterly weak she felt in that moment, so she could allow herself brief rest, especially if the alternative was lying about, pitying herself and her miserable existence. “I’d like that.”

“Then I will give you a moment to change clothes,” Alexstrasza said, rising to her feet. Once again, Sylvanas felt like a child in her presence. She briefly wondered if Alleria had the same feeling when standing besides the Life-Binder. The dragon queen retreated to the hallway with a few long strides, leaving Sylvanas to herself. 

It took Sylvanas several minutes to get up from the bed, despite having no breath she could calm and no heartbeat that could race in her chest. While she absolutely did not want to admit to herself that she was gathering her courage, she found that her hands were clenched into fists that were so tight that her nails dug into the wrappings and left light, crescent shaped indents. The nightclothes she retrieved from the closet were soft, supple, and delicately embroidered with dark red and orange threads. A subtle flame motif waved around the sleeves of the nightshirt, while a similar fire curled around the legs of the trousers. Aside from her mother’s indoor leather slippers, that she took special care to set down by the foot of the bed, Sylvanas discarded the clothing Vereesa had gathered from the Spire and threw them in a heap on the ground. The wrappings on her hands stayed on, since she found that they were very sensitive still, when peeling off a sliver and pressing onto the skin. 

After telling Alexstrasza that she was ready, Sylvanas folded back the blankets and laid down. Apart from her brief and very unpleasant experience in Windrunner Spire, it had been literal months since she laid down on a proper bed, and even longer since she had covered herself with such a thick, plush blanket. Had it been years? A decade? Even the one that she kept around in her quarters in Lordaeron and then Grommash Hold did not hold a candle to the one she was under now, and she quickly found that she couldn’t properly remember what it felt like to have the warm weight of a blanket on top of her. 

When the Life-Binder re-entered the room, she had brought an additional comfort with her, in the shape of a thick fur of an animal that Sylvanas surprisingly found that she couldn’t name. Instead of bothering to attempt to wrestle her arms out from under the sheets, she stared at the fur in an attempt to identify it, making it so she was forced to lie back as Alexstrasza draped it over her. There was a brief pause as the Life-Binder studied her before sitting down on the bed and looking upon Sylvanas with a slight, concerned frown. 

“I sense much unrest in your body, Sylvanas,” she softly said. “You were raised in a very… sloppy manner.” 

“I function,” Sylvanas grated. She wanted to say that there was nothing _ sloppy _about the way the Lich King had flayed her soul until her mind broke, locked her body into an iron coffin for torment, and tortured her to no end, causing unimaginable pain that was still branded into her mind. That would take so much energy, though, something that escaped her more and more by the second. Even drinking from Jaina, it seemed, had been a temporary solution to a very long-term problem.

Yet Alexstrasza made a little, disapproving sound in the back of her mouth that could be interpreted as a “no, you don’t function”. Before Sylvanas could begin to think of arguing with her, the dragon lifted her right hand. The tips of her fingers slowly started to glow green with her magic, once again making Sylvanas’s scars tingle. It also caused an odd, tight sensation in her chest that couldn’t help but make her think of unshackling her banshee form and her body. It felt nearly as if her broken spirit wanted to escape, seek out whatever power the Life-Binder held in her hand, and Sylvanas quickly brushed that thought aside. It was rather disturbing, and she did not want to pay much attention to it. 

With slow, deliberate movements, the dragon queen brought her hand to Sylvanas’s forehead, pressing her index and middle fingers onto the cool skin. Instantly, a warm dizziness spread through Sylvanas’s body. She tensed underneath the blankets, but Alexstrasza quietly told her not to fight, since falling asleep is much more pleasant that way. Sylvanas’s limbs grew heavy, her eyelids drooping as darkness crept up from the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t quite remember what it felt like to succumb to sleep but this felt _ right_, like it was supposed to be exactly how a wave of sleep washing over someone was supposed to feel. 

Very faintly, she felt Alexstrasza’s fingers leave her skin. The bed dipped as the Life-Binder stood. A soft click told her that she had dimmed the lamp that stood on the bedside cabinet. 

Then, for the first time in years, Sylvanas Windrunner slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, both braz and I are in uni, so we apologize for how odd our publishing schedule is. We're still writing this, I promise! -xore
> 
> Finally fluff! -braz


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks mom for beta reading

_ “It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.” - Julius Caesar _

Sylvanas awoke with a slightly dizzy feeling, but not one that she found unpleasant. She could not remember how long it had been since she had felt that way. Even in the days leading up to her first death, sleep had been sparse, as she’d opted to allow her rangers to rest instead. Her muscles ached a little, an odd feeling that should have been unpleasant. And yet, she couldn’t find it in herself to be annoyed, as it allowed her to leisurely stretch her legs, feeling warm relaxation in her muscles and tendons when she turned on her side underneath the heavy furs. She must have slept very deeply, as she had never been able to sleep quite that well when lying on her back. 

As she sluggishly blinked against the tiredness that still lingered in her mind, Sylvanas watched her surroundings came into focus. The soft reds and browns of her new room in Wyrmrest Temple were pleasing to the eye and the mind, as they brought some light and color into the room without causing it to be overwhelming. It took her a moment to notice that there was a new pile of brown fabric in front of her face that had definitely not been there when Alexstrasza had put her to sleep. On a stool laid a small stack of clothing. Sylvanas’s ears perked up as she slowly sat upright, pulling the blanket around herself and only uncovering a single arm to inspect the clothes. 

There was a beige undershirt, spun from thick cotton, with fine leather lacing down the collar and the ends of the sleeves. Underneath it were several sets of smallclothes and a large roll of red fabric, that Sylvanas eyed for a moment before realizing that it was meant to be wrapped around her hands. There were sturdy leather pants, complete with a belt that bore delicate engravings of dragons. The pants had a layer of soft, warm fur on the inside that made Sylvanas look forward to wearing them, despite not needing the isolation against the cold. Her armor had always been rather uncomfortable. Finally, she picked up two different sleeveless doublets. One was made from dark red fabric, with golden buttons closing the front and golden embroidery on the collar. The other one was in a shade of turquoise that used to be her preferred colour, when she had been alive. Sylvanas was completely stunned for a few seconds, only snapping back to reality when a small note fluttered to the ground. 

_ Good morning Sylvanas, _

_ I hope that you have slept well, though with the state you were in, I don’t think that was an issue. When you are well rested, feel free to take a bath in the bathroom adjoining your chamber. I placed a few oils and soaps there that I acquired from Quel’thalas, for your enjoyment. These clothes are not all of the ones that you will receive from me. Rather, they were what I could quickly find around the Temple. The red tunic is borrowed from one of my daughters, she would like to have it back by the time I have ordered a fresh one for you. The blue tunic however, is something that Alleria suggested you could wear, since you favoured that colour when she knew you best. _

_ When you feel ready, come to the chamber at the very end of the hallway. It is where I have my shared quarters with your sister. Then I will gather the Red Dragonflight and introduce you to them. _

_ ~ Alexstrasza _

The bathroom. Sylvanas hadn’t taken any time to look at it when she had first arrived. With the note in hand, she padded barefoot over the floor. As with the larger chamber, the bathroom’s colour scheme was designed to be comforting. Here there were more shades of beige, muted whites, and light brown finishing. A very plush towel hung over the designated rack, within arm’s reach of the large tub. Cautiously, Sylvanas touched the runes next to the tap of the bathtub, red eyes narrowed as she tapped several ones to ensure a hopefully comfortable water temperature. Not that she had a good reference point, since her skin was long since numb to most warm and cold sensations. 

On the plank above the sink, underneath the mirror, several different oils, soaps and a few washcloths were displayed, as the Life-Binder had written. There was also a hairbrush present, which Sylvanas picked up to comb her tousled hair with. The action forced her to look at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. To her own surprise, the yellowish light of the magelights in the ceiling of the bathroom appeared to hide the worst of the sickly grey pallor that her skin usually had. Her eyes burned like coals, but they didn’t seem so sunken in their sockets anymore. She was still very skinny, even more so than she typically was in her undead existence. It seemed like Jaina’s blood hadn’t been enough to completely heal her body. Briefly, she pondered being mad at the mage for that, if only to rid herself of all of those odd… _ fond _ feelings she’d been experiencing, but pushed the thought away. Proudmoore didn’t deserve that. 

After combing the tangles out of her hair, Sylvanas stepped into the filled bath. Promptly, she nearly fell onto the floor in surprise, yanking her foot out of the water and grabbing the wall for support. The water was very hot. Unpleasantly hot. And she could _ feel _it. Whatever it was that Alexstrasza’s magic had done, it allowed her to feel much, much more than usual. After putting a substantial amount of cold water into the bath to avoid boiling her skin off, Sylvanas slowly sunk into the tub again. She took a bit of oil, the kind that smelled of pine resin, into the cupped palm of her hand, rubbing it over her tender skin. Perhaps it was only her wistful imagination, but it seemed as if she could feel more of the silky soft oil on her skin. 

Thus, she took her time, washing more thoroughly than she had done in what seemed to be years. A few times, she dove under completely, relishing in the fact that she didn’t need to breathe, to let the warm water surround her. Only when the bath had begun to cool did she hoist herself out, towelling her body dry. 

Then she walked to where she had left the clothing, on her bed. The soft fur on the inside of the pants and the doublet felt heavenly against her body, though she noticed that the sensitivity of her skin had already begun to dim. She was not so desperate that she would ask Alexstrasza to perform whatever spell she had used again. No, Sylvanas was above such things, and had been even when she was alive. She shivered, suddenly feeling ever so slightly dizzy. With a soft grunt, she shook her head and walked down the corridor, to where Alexstrasza said that she had her chambers. 

The door was open on a crack, which made her wonder whether Alexstrasza had left it like that on purpose. Carefully, she opened it further, making the underside scrape ever so slightly over the carpet. Near the window, the massive form of the Life-Binder turned around, her smile as warm as ever. Alleria was, again, nowhere to be found. Sylvanas had the suspicion that her sister would attempt to avoid her for a while, something that both relieved and unnerved her to no end.

“Good morning, Sylvanas,” Alexstrasza said. “I see that you have found the clothes and the things I had put in the bathroom.”

“Good morning,” Sylvanas mumbled, her eyes drifting down to her feet, away from the Life-Binder’s golden gaze. “I… yes, I found everything. I - _ ah_.” 

The room suddenly blurred and spun before her eyes. Blindly, Sylvanas grasped for the edge of the table that stood in the middle of the chamber, and her hand just brushed against the rim when Alexstrasza’s strong arms wrapped around her waist and shoulders in what was almost an embrace. She was set down on a chair and the next thing she knew, the Life-Binder was peering into her eyes with a very soft, yet concerned frown on her face.

“Healed with the blood of another,” she murmured, repeating what she had said in Windrunner Spire. “And how little it does, given the state you are in.” 

Sylvanas shifted, starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable under the dragon’s gaze. “This never happened before.” 

“I suppose that you’ve never had to endure quite so much damage before, without an additional resurrection?” Alexstrasza moved away, though she quickly returned with a cup in her hand. It had a small layer of water in it, though Sylvanas was only able to focus on it for a moment. Tremors went through her weakened body as she grit her teeth against the pain of her freshly healed wounds that slowly started to make itself known again. She only shook her head.

The Life-Binder knelt down besides again, her dagger in hand. To Sylvanas’s unabashed surprise, she drew a line over her arm with the blade, drawing a small amount of blood that dripped into the gilded cup she held. “A dragon’s blood,” she said, offering the cup to Sylvanas. “It should sustain you for longer than Jaina’s. Long enough for us to figure out a different solution. It would be cruel of me to let you remain in this pitiful state.” 

When Sylvanas found her hands to be too shaky to hold on to the cup at the first try, Alexstrasza took her hand and wrapped it securely around the cool metal. As the undead elf drank, she spied the Life-Binder healing her own cut with a quick hand gesture, watching as green energy sealed the wound, leaving no scars behind. Then the diluted blood hit her tongue and she promptly couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Whereas Jaina’s blood had been like water, briefly filling her but tasting of very little, the dragon queen’s blood was rich in flavour and as hearty as stew. She could nearly feel her hollow ribcage and the jutting bones by the joints of her elbows and knees fill out. It _ had _to be at least partially an illusion. 

As with seemingly everything else she did, Alexstrasza gently took the cup from her once she had finished the contents. She then walked to the large desk near the window, where a thick cape hung over the chair. As she fastened it with a clasp, Sylvanas briefly looked around the room. 

A curtain, hanging from a rail on the ceiling, divided the chamber into two separate spaces. It wasn’t entirely closed, allowing her to see the foot end of a truly gigantic four-poster bed. As with most of the Temple’s interior, it was largely decorated in red and brown colours, with the occasional golden flourish. Next to the bed a greenish tunic had been lazily thrown over the nightstand. Alleria’s colour and Alleria’s carelessness. It irked Sylvanas, though she made sure to keep her face schooled into neutrality. The more she looked around the room, the more of Alleria’s _ stuff _ she saw. A pair of boots, much too small to belong to Alexstrasza, stashed away next to the closet. Her sister’s tools for fletching her arrows, with curls of wood and scraps of feathers, laid on a corner of the Life-binder’s desk. 

Suddenly antsy and wanting to leave the room that seemed so saturated with her sister’s presence, Sylvanas turned to Alexstrasza, who was in the process of fastening a heavy looking golden ring around the tip of one of her horns. All formality seemed to have been left behind in the snow outside Wyrmrest Temple, since she flashed a brief smile at Sylvanas before clicking the ring into place and beckoning Sylvanas to follow her. Once she had led the elf through the maze of corridors - Sylvanas swore that she would memorize them quickly - and arrived on the terrace, she signaled to one of the guards. In response, the drakonid put a large, brass horn to their lips and played one long, low note that reverberated through Sylvanas’s entire form. A dragon’s roar, given the shape of an instrument. 

Instantly, many of the dragons at work slowly laid their things down and began heading in the direction of a large, oval building that proudly stood in the middle of the sanctum. As Alexstrasza guided Sylvanas there, she said: “It’s a conference hall of sorts. We used to host those inside the temple, but as I said yesterday, we expanded and repurposed the Ruby Sanctum to include more and more facilities. I wish to show you another few after we’ve spoken to the flight.” 

Once inside, they only had to walk through a single hall to reach a round room. It was decorated even more simply than the rest of the Sanctum, having only a huge table in the middle with what had to be at least four dozen chairs around it. About four were already occupied. The chamber and the doorway were both very high, truly dragon-sized. “No one sits at the head of the table here,” Alexstrasza commented. “Not anymore.” She sat down at the side of the table that was furthest removed from the door. From there, she softly spoke to Sylvanas, who had taken a seat next to her. 

“That is Xerestrasza, one of my eldest daughters,” she said, nodding at a woman who had taken the shape of a blonde high elf. “The sanctum guardian, who oversees things when I’m not present. If you ever find yourself bored, you can ask if she has any tasks for you.” 

Before Sylvanas could wince at either that prospect or the fact that the woman politely nodded at her with a semblance of kindness in her eyes, someone loudly cleared their throat, just behind her seat. The same woman who had been so brash the day prior stood there with a deep scowl on her face. Her square chin and muscular build strongly reminded Sylvanas of a night elf warden she believed was called Shadowsong. “You’re in my seat,” the dragon rasped. 

“Tora! Just come sit here, this isn’t an official meeting or anything,” someone called out from the other side of the table. 

Bless Belore, the woman, who appeared to be called Torastrasza, moved away, shooting one last glare at Sylvanas. Said glare was met with a simple raised eyebrow in response. Despite the odd kindness of the Life-Binder, Sylvanas had no expectations that she would be liked by every member of the flight, just as she had not when first joining the Horde. 

“Once again, I apologize for her behaviour.” Alexstrasza sighed softly. “Yesterday, Torastrasza insisted that she would put extra guards near the weapon storage, I couldn’t discourage her, no matter how I tried… Regardless, the two who called her over are Raelostraz and Corastrasza. Brother and sister, children of one of my cousins.” 

The seats were slowly starting to look fuller. Alexstrasza continued naming those who entered. Koristrasza, Lirastrasza, Belgaristrasz, Kandostraz. Sylvanas’s head spun with the names by the end of it. Nearly all of them had taken the guise of an elf, making Sylvanas wonder whether they had done so on purpose, given the knowledge amongst the flight of her arrival. 

Lastly, a veritable flock of small dragons fluttered and hopped into the room, jumping on top of the table and remaining there in a disorganized pile. A somewhat winded female member of the flight hoarded the last few into the room before shutting the doors and excusing herself for her late arrival. “These five are a handful, mother,” she said with a faint smile on her face. 

“It’s not a problem, Aurastrasza, not a problem at all.” With that, and a playful nudge to one of the little dragons who had bounded up to her over the table, Alexstrasza stood up and addressed her flight. 

“As you all know, we have been tasked with safeguarding Sylvanas Windrunner.” 

The sheer weight of those worse hung in the air like a thick, cloying cloud. Several members of the Red Dragonflight coughed warily, turned their heads to Sylvanas to stare at her or at their leader. Sylvanas felt the urge to let go of a deep, shuddering sigh, but held herself back just before the lack of air in her dead lungs could cause uneasy spasms in her body. “Her sisters, Vereesa and Alleria, my beloved, with the help of Lady Jaina Proudmoore have saved her from a certain death. Now we must make certain that she stays safe, and that her survival is a closely guarded secret, until she decides that she is ready to come out into the open.” 

“Why are we vouching for the safety of a murderer, mother?” one of the red dragons hissed. “Have you forgotten the utter destruction she wrought upon Teldrassil? Or the fact that there might have been a good reason for even the Horde to turn on her?” 

Sylvanas tensed suddenly, her teeth bared as a surge of phantom pain coursing through the healed wound that had once been deep in her back. As though sensing her change in disposition, Alexstrasza raised her voice the slightest bit, somehow assuring her that she had the situation under control. “I have heard, from Jaina and Vereesa both, some details that allowed me to believe that there is more to her story than the tale many tell. We must not forget that every living Sin’dorei has their life to thank to Sylvanas and her noble sacrifice.”

It seemed like there would be more to her words, but Alexstrasza was quickly interrupted by another member of her flight, who scoffed in a manner befitting a high elf. “And we’re supposed to believe the words of the two people who recklessly and needlessly _ slaughtered _ many of the remaining Sin’dorei in Dalaran? The only Windrunner worthy of any trust would be Alleria, and we all know how she feels about Sylvanas.” 

Perhaps _ that _ was why they’d chosen their forms. Not because of the fabled beauty or near-immortality of high elves, but because they spread gossip just as easily. Sylvanas’s nostrils flared at the idea of _ Alleria_, of all people, being trustworthy. She herself no longer trusted Vereesa, naturally, but even her baby sister was far more dependable than Alleria. And even one of the most _ prominent and powerful _ members of the _ Alliance _was more trustworthy than Alleria, regardless of her past actions. Sylvanas opened her mouth, a sharp remark at the tip of her tongue, but caught a quick and firm glare that Alexstrasza sent to silence her. 

“Your concerns, Lirastrasza, are understandable. All three of them have blood on their hands, and we mustn’t forget that Alleria does as well. But have we not all made mistakes, albeit not as costly, as the ones these women have made in times of anger or crisis? The purge of Dalaran is not something to take lightly, but it was done immediately following the destruction of the city-state of Theramore. Jaina lost her people and Vereesa, her husband.” It took everything in Sylvanas’s power not to wince. It did not feel like it had been a whole three years since Vereesa had broken down before her during the events of the trial. “Both of them have expressed remorse for their actions, and have worked hard to become better people than they were then. Does Sylvanas not deserve the same opportunity that Jaina and Vereesa have been afforded?”

All of her actions had reasons behind them, naturally, but Sylvanas was well aware that even so, what she’d done had brought far more death and destruction than the actions of both of her sisters and Jaina combined. The loss of the Undercity had been a risk, and one that she was willing to take, but the burning of Teldrassil had _ never _ been a part of her plan. Had Saurfang simply killed the old druid, the tree would still be standing. Sylvanas knew better than to say that, though, and glanced over the faces of the meeting’s attendees. Several glanced warily at her, only to avert their gazes when they were met, while others seemed to openly show the trust they held in Alexstrasza. Even the few that clearly disagreed with her took her words into consideration, and Sylvanas briefly reveled in the idea of a council that did not argue with loud and brash tones, jumping to every conclusion possible. She spared another glance to Alexstrasza, who did not seem to catch her look, before letting out the softest of sighs and standing up beside her. 

“I will not attempt to justify the actions that I have taken.” Sylvanas projected her voice, glancing around the room to the various dragons as she spoke. “I could, very easily, but clearly that would not be welcome here. I will say this; the burning of Teldrassil and the subsequent destruction of what remained of Lordaeron were never things I wanted to occur. Could I go back, I would have done all of that differently. I cannot, however, undo past actions, and travelling in time is something that your next of kin try to prevent as much as possible.” 

Aside from several dragons who bristled at the mention of their sister flight, as well as Torastrasza who was clearly ignoring the conversation and Kandostraz who was attempting to gently hold back one of the baby dragons from climbing onto Tora’s boots, most of the flight glanced between one another, clearly still wary of this new guest, but also willing to consider her words, if the little side conversations that sprung up around the room, brimming with Sylvanas’s name, were any indications. Glance after glance was sent her way, but she cooly returned as many as she could, without trying too hard to seem indifferent. After all, aside from Windrunner Spire, she really had no other options of where to go. And her original plan, one she’d set in place _ long _ before the betrayal in Grommash Hold, could no longer work. Not at the moment, at the very least.

Finally, one of the dragons that the Life-Binder had pointed out to her cleared her throat. Lirastrasza was her name, if Sylvanas remembered correctly. She stood, nodding slightly to Alexstrasza. “I admittedly did not think you capable of such words, Windrunner. If you speak the truth, will you be above such actions in the future?” 

Before she spoke, Sylvanas had to rise to her feet as well, if only to try not to feel so damned small compared to all the dragons. “I will,” she simply replied. “Since I do respect the rules of this temple, as they are also the terms of my stay. Furthermore, I doubt that I could go anywhere else at the moment. If you care about the duty of safekeeping that the Red Dragonflight has taken upon them, you will grant me sanc-”

“Enough,” Lirastrasza spat, rising from her seat. “Do not pretend to know enough about our duties to lecture me on them. I will forget about your pretense for now, but we are your saviours, Sylvanas. Don’t make this mistake again. And forgive me my harsh words, please, mother.” 

“They are understandable, my daughter,” Alexstrasza softly said. Then she clasped her hands together and stood as well, “However, this kind of hostility must not last long. It breeds distrust, and that is the absolute last thing that we can use at this moment. Lirastrasza, you and Kandostraz mentioned that your project in rebuilding one of the smaller cabins on the left side of our newest river could use some assistance, did you not? You will now have the aid of Sylvanas. Koristrasza, you are now to look after our hatchlings, taking the shift from Aurastraza. The rest of you know your tasks. Go on your way now, _ belan shi._” 

The slow scraping of chairs, followed by the footsteps of the flight leaving the chamber, was a bit of a buzz in Sylvanas’s ears. Alexstrasza had ended the meeting swiftly, most likely to prevent any scuffles from breaking out. Unlike the councils she was used to, where the attendees often protested that decision and attempted to further their discussions, the dragons had obeyed their leader without question. On top of that, the Life-Binder had seen it fit to set Sylvanas up with the woman who voiced the most complaints against her stay. It reminded Sylvanas of the way her mother had sometimes forced her to do chores with her sisters when they had a fight. That was precisely what this was, doing chores. Sylvanas had always hated chores. 

“Well, are you coming? The cabin won’t build itself!” Without waiting for her answer, Kandostraz turned Sylvanas’s chair around, spinning the elf to face him like an insolent child. Sylvanas bared her teeth and hissed at him, which only earned her a hearty slap on the shoulder. 

She dragged her feet over the floor while following the dragons outside. “What did Alexstrasza say at the end of the meeting?” She asked, partially to fill the silence but mostly to stop Kandostraz from continuing his terribly out of tune humming. “And what did she mean with ‘the new river’?” 

“She said “belan shi”, it means “thank you”. Might be a good phrase to learn, if you are to stay here a long time.” A soft laugh, one that was slightly mocking, followed. “And the river; we’ve made a few new ones, to spice up the interior of the sanctum after the Twilight Dragonflight nearly burned everything to the ground. We draw the water from the springs inside the mountains, one of which also feeds the sacred waters in our hatchery. Oh, and the hot springs, not to forget. Our mother was referring to the largest river, which splits the grounds of the sanctum right in two.” He gestured out to the river itself, glistening in the light. 

The water lapped at the shores, gently clattering over the thousands of rounded pebbles in the riverbed. Inexplicably, it smelled of something fresh. The smell of spring, of the gentle warm rains that were common in Quel’thalas. While Sylvanas scanned the opposite side of the river, she spotted three cabins that had already been built upon the shore. The foundations of a fourth one lay bare on the ground. When Sylvanas asked Kandostrasz what the cabins were for, Lirastrasza answered instead.

“We have not received any travelers who come in winter inside the Sanctum for a long time. But now, Alexstrasza wants to restore the Temple to its function of a final resting place, thus we need to build accommodations. She thinks that many hungry souls will come our way again, as it used to be in the old days.” She waved her hand at the cabins while crossing the wooden bridge over the river. “So we are building these.” 

A pile of materials was stacked next to the foundations of the cabin. Dark wooden stems, stripped of their bark, a few vats of wet chalky mass, a couple large rounded stones. Sylvanas scrunched up her nose preemptively by the thought of having to construct the walls by lathering wooden planks in the mortar. “Why don’t you shift into your dragon forms?” she asked. “It would be much quicker that way.” 

“Don’t you know how refreshing manual labour can be?” Kandostraz beamed. “But don’t worry, we’ll use arcane to lift the heaviest parts for you.” 

Before Sylvanas could protest at being treated like a child, she hear Lirastrasza huff behind her. “Have you shrugged off Kori already? Well, not that I mind the company - Hey! Don’t put your paws into that, you’ll get stuck!” 

Their company appeared to be made out of the five young dragons, who had taken to settling in various positions on the heap of materials. Lirastrasza hastily removed one’s foot from the wet chalk, while Sylvanas attempted to get them off their much needed building resources. She could not do much more than awkwardly wave her arms at them, not wanting to be scrutinized by her draconic company for harming their youngsters. To her annoyance, they did not budge. Kandostraz handed her a shovel and instructed her to dig four holes, by each corner of the rectangle shaped foundations. Paying no further attention to her two companions, she began, but not before cracking her spine. That was not something she recalled being able to do in her undeath before. It provided very little of the relief that it once had, after a long day of hunting or a night of sleeping beneath the stars, but it was more than enough to get her moving. While shovelling dirt on the designated spot and briefly walking back to the stack of logs to measure their diameter with the blade of her shovel, so she knew how wide she needed to dig, she idly wondered if it was due to Alexstrasza’s magic. 

Immediately after clearing away a suitable amount of soil, Lirastrasza placed a log into the hole, easily lifting it with her draconic strength and making sure it was deep in the ground. She didn’t say a word, only grunting in slight exertion. This repeated itself three times, until it was time to build the cabin’s walls. Meanwhile, Kandostraz was steadily chopping away behind them, making the planks for said walls. He used small jets of flame from his hand to smoothen them and bend them straight with the heat. Admittedly, it was innovative. 

“We don’t have enough,” he eventually said. “Must’ve miscalculated when getting these logs earlier today. Sylvanas, why don’t you bring some more? There is a stack of wood behind the council building that Alexstrasza showed you this morning. As an elf, and an undead, you should be able to carry them without a problem. But there is a sled next to the stack, if you find that you-” 

“I will carry them _ by hand_,” Sylvanas grated, turning on her heels and walking back the way she had come from. A sled, as if she needed a sled to carry some logs. Soon enough, she arrived by a large stack of them, neatly piled up under a roof. That made her wonder whether it rained inside the Ruby Sanctum, or if the red dragons had just made it so because they were used to seeing it outside of their enclave. After shouldering a log, she began staunchly walking back to where the cabin was to be built. While walking over the bridge, however, a weight landed on her log, tipping it backwards. 

And so, Sylvanas Windrunner fell on her ass, the log clattering onto the bridge. She barely felt any pain from it, turning around in less than a second and reaching instinctively for a nonexistent bow. A small dragon fluttered down to the ground behind her, tilting its head and blinking. Sylvanas hissed viciously, causing it to skitter back to the other side of the river. _ Good riddance, _she thought, picking up the log and resuming her walk.

“They’re a handful, aren’t they?” Lirastrasza said, without a trace of mockery or teasing in her voice. She took the log from Sylvanas. “Go get another one. And they do that to everyone, don’t worry.” 

_ They do that to everyone, you’re not special_. Gritting her teeth, Sylvanas marched back to retrieve another log. Yet, while she wasn’t an exception, the five youngsters sure seemed to have fun harassing her. They sat on the wood she carried, or tried to land on her head, close to nicking her ears with their little claws. The chattering noises they made were annoying, like children laughing. When she nearly stumbled over them while carrying a bucket full of wet chalk to be applied to one of the cabin’s walls, she’d had enough. Setting down her quarry, she looked the little dragon in its eyes. After kneeling down, and observing that it didn’t budge, not even taking notice of her menacing red eyes, she let smoke unfold from her form. The dragon only sniffed at it. That was the last straw. Sylvanas screeched, brief and shrill. It wasn’t a full banshee screech, as she took care not to actually harm the dragonling, just hoping to scare it off. 

Her attempt failed hopelessly. 

Instead of scurrying away, it flipped over, rolling onto its back with its legs in the air. It did that for a few moments, looking helpless and dumb in Sylvanas’s eyes. Other people might have found it cute. Then it sucked in a deep breath and screeched back, blowing out a plume of smoke. Uproarious laughter followed from behind her. Kandostraz, who sat on the half-finished cabin roof, had to hold on to a plank as to not fall down, so hard did he laugh. Even Lirastrasza, who had been making nothing but sour faces at Sylvanas for the time they had worked on the cabin, was giggling behind her hand.

“Impressive,” she said. “It must be the first time that they heard a banshee scream.” 

Sylvanas sent a furious glare in her direction. “You could offer me some advice on how to get rid of these nuisances, instead of making fun of me. Why are they not afraid?” 

“They often play with Alexstrasza in her true form, a dragon who is literally a hundred times bigger than them and could squash them with a single talon. Why would they be afraid of you? You’re just some being with grey skin, glowing eyes and a funny voice, in their minds.” Shrugging, Lirastrasza walked back to the cabin and began lifting planks with arcane, handing them to Kandostraz on the roof. Sylvanas sighed breathlessly as one of the dragonlings rubbed against her calf with its back. 

As the day went by and the cabin began to look finished, she felt herself tire. It was odd, new, and she wasn’t sure if she found it entirely pleasant. The ache in her muscles was familiar, but only as a very distant memory. It did not go away when she stretched her arms a few times. But she soldiered on, ignoring it for the most part, focusing on getting the exterior of the cabin finished. She already knew that she would be working on the interior the day after, something which she didn’t know if she looked forward to doing. At least it was better than sitting around in her room, being bored out of her mind. 

After another two hours, the dragons she had worked with for a large part of the day slowly headed towards their own residences, Sylvanas was left alone. Well, _ alone _certainly wasn’t entirely true. The dragonlings were still with her, fluttering around or lazing on the ground by her feet. One attempted to nuzzle against her ankle and she was about to remove it forcefully when she heard Alexstrasza call out her name. The Life-Binder walked up to her, causing all five of the little dragons to run in their mother’s direction. 

“Come with me, Sylvanas,” she warmly said. “I wish to show you another one of the beautiful things that your new home has to offer.” 

Having nothing better to do, Sylvanas followed the dragon further into the sanctum than she had gone before. The entire place was surrounded by mountains, a little enclave that the Red Dragonflight had carved out for themselves. 

Close to the foothills of those mountains was a dome-shaped building. Alexstrasza softly tapped a rune on the doorframe, so the door slid upwards, revealing the interior. A wave of moist, hot air wafted out, so warm that even Sylvanas could feel it. 

Inside, there was a true wealth of plants. They grew along a winding web of paths, which were covered with light grey and yellow gravel. They divided the garden into several plots, each of which housed different plants. Along them, several benches were placed, with dragon-shaped mosaics as decorations. Alexstrasza guided Sylvanas into the greenhouse, gesturing to a few wooden racks and planks that stood against the wall. On the same wall, arcane patterns curled and swirled, shimmering on the stone. And the wooden racks held all the gardening tools that Sylvanas could imagine. Shovels both large and small, rakes, watering cans and the odd broom here and there. Numerous boxes and crates were piled on top of each other as well, most likely holding seeds and plants. 

“The arcane system regulates the climate in here,” the Life-Binder said when she spotted Sylvanas looking at the patterns on the wall. “Every plot can have its own temperature, moisture and light setting. Come, follow me, I will show you yours.” 

“Mine?” Sylvanas inquired stiffly. “You expect me to start gardening? I thought I was supposed to do chores.” 

For a moment, Alexstrasza did not answer. She led Sylvanas past little rivers, streaming alongside the many paths, with gravel in their beds and all kinds of water loving plants growing out of them. Many cobblestone bridges crossed over them. Then she held still, by a bare plot that only contained loose dirt. Her bronze eyes had the concerned look in them that Sylvanas had become well acquainted with already. “Sylvanas… you used to love nature so much, didn’t you?” 

“Undead and nature generally don’t mix well,” the elf mumbled. “Unless you wish for me to bring the blight infested flora of the Undercity here?” 

“I assume that you say that out of the same sentiment as your comment from yesterday, about undead and sleep?” There it was again, the infuriating sort of kindness that Sylvanas simply could not reply to with a snap or a snarl. The Dragon Queen meant well, so well that Sylvanas could only sigh, thought it came out as more of a huff.

“Try it for me, Sylvanas. Please, you only need to try it for a few days. If you don’t like it by then, that is alright too. But please, give it a chance.” 

Though Sylvanas wanted to formulate another objection, she could not get halfway through the thought without being disturbed by a terrible clatter and screech from somewhere in the garden. Far off on the other side of the enormous room, plants shook and a small red shape fell out of a fruit-bearing tree. Alexstrasza laughed softly. “I’ll go get the dragonlings out of the foliage. They know that they shouldn’t sneak in here, but I suppose they must have followed us in.” As she walked away to retrieve the five young dragons, she turned around once more. “Vereesa told me that you used to like peacebloom, when I was in Windrunner Spire. There are seeds for it in those crates you saw near the entrance. Also, I have acquired something else for you.” 

At those words, the Life-Binder snapped her fingers, causing a flare of green energy to spread from her fingers through the air. Sylvanas was quick to turn around, following it as it lightly touched the dirt in her empty plot of ground. In the middle, a short, green stem suddenly sprouted from the ground. It bore a single bud on the tip. There was a small piece of parchment attached to it, on which Alexstrasza had written: _ “Sylvanas. Consider this a housewarming present. Enjoy your stay in Wyrmrest.” _

“What is that?” Sylvanas sharply asked. Alexstrasza only smiled at her, not giving away anything, before calling out in Draconic to one of the dragonlings, which had climbed one of the higher trees in the garden and was having some trouble coming down. 

There were at least a few hours of daylight left. Sylvanas knew this, because the light in the Ruby Sanctum appeared to dim with the daylight outside. Therefore, she could either spend some time on this daft gardening idea that Alexstrasza had, or she could sit around in her room with very little to do, waiting until the rest of the flight had eaten and the Life-Binder would use her sleeping spell again. And so, while Alexstrasza had caught all of the five little dragons and was making her way outside, she slowly walked back to the entrance and looked around at the plants that were readily available. 

She grabbed two shovels, a large one and a much smaller spade. It had been so long since her mother had once forced her to dig up weeds out of the grounds around Windrunner Spire. Yet even though that was so long ago, she had to have some useful memories that could help her with going about this gardening. There was a large, shallow, rectangular box that laid on a wooden table next to the tool racks. On its front was a scribble in Draconic writing, which made Sylvanas frown and scour her mind for any clues to what it might say. Luckily, there was an even messier note on the side of the box that read “take a seed, leave a seed’. 

Apart from the little plant that Sylvanas now owned, the one which Alexstrasza refused to say anything about, she had nothing to leave in the box. Luckily, she did not have to doubt for long, since the arcane along the walls rippled and the doors to the outside swiveled open. One of the male members of the flight stepped in, nodding to Sylvanas, not seeming bothered by her presence at all. He swiftly walked up to her, a hand outstretched. “Raelostraz. I hope you remember me from the council?” He said, with his aunt’s warm smile ever present on his face. 

“I do…” Sylvanas murmured, swiftly hiding her frail and still wrapped hands behind her back. “If I may ask -”

“The seeds?” Clearly he had seen her dwindle. “Just take whatever you want from the vegetables. The right half of the box is a free for all. We were drowning in tomatoes last season. I mean, we’re a big flight, but we ate them for literal weeks.” He appeared to be just as chatty as his aunt, which Sylvanas did not necessarily think to be a good thing. While merrily talking, he grabbed a handful of gardening tools and walked off into the garden. “Just make sure not to tell Xere to infuse the soil with too many spells again. Made everything grow out of control.” 

Sylvanas selected a few things from the box, a generous helping of tomato seeds, three packets of lettuce seeds and a few very small carrots, nothing more than orange stubs the size of her fingernails. With those in one hand and the spades in the other, she walked to her spot again. There, she rolled her new leather breeches up to slightly above her knees and sat down in the soil. Digging a few holes was easy, and so was placing the seeds in them and covering them up loosely again, so there were little heaps of dirt in various spots. Two small rows of three tomato plants, a half-circle of carrots and lettuce in the front of the plot and Alexstrasza’s mysterious plant right in the middle. It all looked rather nice, yet there was something missing. 

After walking back to the collection of plants and seeds in the front of the greenhouse, she remembered that Alexstrasza had mentioned peacebloom being amongst the various species. She found the small, round seeds rather quickly, and took some silverleaf cuttings for good measure, since those would grow roots if she just left them in the moist soil. As she made her way towards her plot again, it started to rain.

Nothing spectacular, just a drizzle, more a mist of sorts. Though to her left, in a section of the garden that housed spectacular tropical plants with large, wine red fruits the size of her head, a true torrent poured down from somewhere on the ceiling, where the arcane patterns glittered and flashed. On her own spot it was nothing but a light kind of rain, precisely the kind that was best for vegetables and some flowers. She could not remember if she had felt the rain so clearly on her skin in her undeath up until this point. 

When Alexstrasza pressed her fingers to the elf’s forehead that evening, she fell asleep to the thought of the smell of rain on the terrace of Windrunner Spire.

~~~

A loud, grating knock interrupted Sylvanas’s sleep, and whoever dared to prevent her from getting anymore of her well missed rest did not wait for her to answer before they barged in. The heavy blanket was yanked from her form, and Sylvanas made quite the pathetic noise as she grasped, trying to return it, only to hear a snicker from above her. Of course. Alleria.

Her suspicions were confirmed when her older sister spoke, annoyance heavy in her voice. “Belore, and here I thought Vereesa was the heaviest sleeper in our family. Get up.”

Sylvanas cracked open her eyes, only to shoot a glare up to the woman from where she still lied on her bed. “I’d prefer not to,” she murmured. “I’ve done plenty today, and I _ know _ that I wasn’t able to sleep for more than a few hours before you intruded.” She rolled to her other side, leisurely stretching her legs out and cracking her knuckles (something she was all too happy to do, now that her hands functioned better) as she made a show of shooing her sister away. “Leave now, and tell that dragon of yours that if she wanted me awake so soon, she shouldn’t have put me to bed at all.”

She could practically hear the roll of Alleria’s eyes, something she’d become all too familiar with in life, as the woman haphazardly threw the covers back on the bed. They didn’t touch Sylvanas, but the banshee was all too quick to greedily grab them and wrap them around her lithe form once again. “Alexstrasza didn’t send me. You have a guest. And for some reason, even one of the smartest women on Azeroth can’t seem to muster the brain cells to avoid you at all costs.”

Though Alleria muttered the last sentence as she started back towards the door, Sylvanas bolted upright, her head snapping to face her sister. “Jaina’s here?” While she was only afforded a brief nod in response, Sylvanas was quick to get out of bed, pulling on the leather gear Alexstrasza had offered her over her makeshift sleepwear of an undershirt and boxers. She heard a small noise of disgust where Alleria was standing in the doorway but ignored it, knowing all too well how her body looked. There was no way to defend it. At the very least, the jagged, not entirely healed over scar that ran through her torso had been covered by the undershirt. That seemingly permanent mark lingered, reminding her of her failure. The very last thing she needed was for her older sister to see it and think the same. 

She forced the thought away as she redressed, not bothering to try to pick out a different outfit than the one she’d worn for the past few days. It was comfortable and durable, and she couldn’t help but like it regardless of Alleria’s… involvement in choosing it. Without another word to her sister, Sylvanas hurried past her, still fiddling with the little buttons, straps, and buckles that required far more attention than she was affording.

Only once she had made her way out of her temporary home and into the main room of the Temple did Sylvanas slow, putting on the air of indifference and uncaring that she had worked so many years on to perfect. She casually glanced around the room as Alleria caught up to her, though she did not slow down as Sylvanas did. Instead, she half jogged past her sister and over to where a small crowd of people had gathered, most of which Sylvanas recognized as Alexstrasza's youngest children. They seemed to be enamoured by something, and Sylvanas’s stiff demeanor broke ever so slightly when she saw what. She was quick to pull herself together once again, allowing herself only a small smirk as she watched the enchanted children.

Jaina stood in the center of them, turned so Sylvanas could only see her side, but she was still able to tell that the mage was grinning wide as she weaved spell after spell into the air. Ice danced, forming gorgeous patterns that exploded into snow. Though each spell was the same trick time and time again, the children didn’t seem to mind, and were soon tossing the magical snow at one another. At that rate, it wouldn’t be long before the entire floor was coated and the children were building forts, a tactical game that Sylvanas herself had once played with her siblings. It had prepared her all too well for the title of Ranger-General.

She waited for a few minutes, content to simply watch until the children were far more focused on pelting each other with snowballs than on the mage, and started forward. “Proudmoore,” she said, her tone not unkind or overly formal despite how she carried herself. Jaina turned to face her, and immediately Sylvanas noted how much healthier she looked after only a few days. Her skin, while still as pale as ever, had a healthy flush, and she stood proudly upright, living true to her last name. The moment she saw Sylvanas, she lit up, offering a friendly grin and a wave that shot more snow into the air. Briefly, the banshee had to ponder if her little speech at Grommash Hold had really done this much to change Jaina’s opinion about her. 

Not allowing herself to get too caught up in her thoughts, Sylvanas closed the distance between them, though she still remained a respectable few feet from the mage. “Sylvanas,” Jaina greeted, seeming to note the distance between them and respecting it. She gave the woman a once-over. “You look so much better.”

Sylvanas had half a mind to tease her, to say something along the lines of ‘No thanks to you’, but resisted. She couldn’t truly know how much Jaina liked her, if at all, given that they had yet to discuss the issue of another certain Proudmoore. It would be in her benefit to remain on good terms with the mage. “Yes,” she said simply, giving a nod. “Your blood kept me alive, and the morning after my arrival, Alexstrasza offered some of her own. Dragon blood, as it turns out, is quite filling.”

“Oh!” While Jaina looked a bit surprised, she didn’t seem at all offended that Sylvanas had also taken the blood of another. Absentmindedly, it seemed, she reached up and rubbed the spot where she’d been bitten through her thicker cold weather clothes. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. You still looked so… gaunt, when last we spoke.”

Offering only a nod in response for the moment, Sylvanas pointedly glanced to where the mage was still rubbing her clothed skin. “And how do you fare?”

Jaina tore her hand away from herself, instead folding both of her hands behind her back. “Once I arrived back in Boralus, I was able to get a few proper healing potions. My mother and Anduin thankfully did not question my absence, thanks to the letters I thought to send them, and I’m back to my usual business, I suppose.” She paused for a moment. “I’m feeling quite better, though. A little extra rest, some healing potions, and plenty of water seemed to fix any issues that remained within the day.”

“Very good,” Sylvanas responded, and the two remained there for a few moments, silent. Frankly, Sylvanas couldn’t tell if said silence was awkward or comfortable for Jaina, but it was quickly becoming awkward for herself. She still, it seemed, did not quite know how to react to this woman’s presence, given… _ everything _ that Jaina had done for her. Listening to her. Convincing her to go back to the Spire. Offering her own blood to heal her. She was not used to this unconditional kindness, especially when the one offering said kindness did not seem to have any ulterior motives. None, at least, that Sylvanas could pick out. Even Nathanos, up until the very end, had clearly been preening. Trying to impress her, for reasons that were not simply due to his high ranking station. If Jaina’s thick and conservative wear was any indication, she had no intention to behave the same way. 

And that, of course, was for the best. Both to kill any awkward silence between them and the thoughts that bounced around her mind, Sylvanas tilted her head ever so slightly. “Would you care to see the little project I’ve been working on?”

~~~

The word ‘project’, admittedly, intrigued Jaina, and what she was presented with was not at all what she had been expecting. ‘Project’ seemed to imply something sinister, or at least it did with the way Sylvanas had all but purred the word. She’d almost expected the banshee to lead her to some lair she had managed to find, and show her new Forsaken she’d raised to follow her with even more loyalty than the ones residing in Theramore once had. Or, perhaps, she was planning some elaborate escape, and had hung a tapestry on the wall to cover her tunnel out. However, Sylvanas led her to a room so warm that Jaina had to remove her overcoat and rest it upon a nearby bench. 

The room housed a plethora of different gardens, all of which grew various fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Briefly, Jaina found herself more fascinated with the magic that varnished the truly enormous room than anything within the walls, keeping it warm enough to grow so many plants, but snapped out of it when Sylvanas turned and started walking down one of the smaller pathways. She hurried after her, briefly cursing how elves seemed to always take such long strides. 

“It rains in here too, you know. Just last night I was caught in it while tending to my plants,” Sylvanas said once she’d caught up, casting a brief glance over to her as she continued to walk. “I’m sure it does more things as well, given that the strength of this arcane still manages to alert my senses despite how… dulled they have become. I’m sure you can feel it as well.”

“I can,” Jaina confirmed, taking her time to look around the room and admire some flowers they passed. Though they were no good for any herbalism, something that she’d come to learn a bit about during her first stay in Dalaran, carnations were her favorite flower. They seemed to be so rare on Azeroth, as though the dragons at Wyrmrest had been hogging them from the world. “It’s quite incredible, in all honesty. So much power channeled into allowing these gardens to flourish.”

“It’s truly something else,” Sylvanas said, her tone admittedly soft. “Reminiscent, in a sense, of what Quel’thalas used to be like. Of what Silvermoon used to be like.”

Jaina could neither confirm nor deny that, as she’d scarcely visited Quel’thalas before its fall, and when she had, she’d always been escorted on the arms of Kael’thas. Never had the prince allowed her to simply wander off on her own and explore, a past time she’d become quite fond of growing up in Boralus and having moved to Dalaran. She wasn’t sure how to respond, given her own complicated history with the fall of the elven nation, but quickly found that she didn’t have to. Sylvanas stopped walking, gazing down with a gleam of pride in her burning eyes at a garden that sat before them.

It wasn’t anything magnificent. Nothing compared to the near tropical forests that some of the other allotted spots seemed to hold, though Jaina could not fault her for that. She’d only been staying in the Temple for a few days. Her lot was small, probably half the size of Jaina’s bedroom in Boralus, but she couldn’t help but be impressed nonetheless. Not too long ago, she’d thought the banshee capable of naught more than ruin and destruction, given the razing of Darkshore, the burning of Teldrassil, and the second annihilation of the nation that used to be known as Lordaeron. But now, healthy and moist dirt was evenly distributed into small piles in the grass, a few of which already sprouting small stems that Jaina chalked up to a type of magical fertilizer that was likely included within the multiple layers of arcane that coated the room. One plant was already sprouting flowers, though pinned to it was a handwritten note from Alexstrasza that read, _ “Sylvanas. Consider this a housewarming present. Enjoy your stay in Wyrmrest.” _

“It’s lovely,” Jaina said, realizing that she’d been staring for a few moments without saying much. “What all did you plant?”

“Vegetables, mostly. Carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes seemed to be a favorite in the ‘take a seed, leave a seed’ box near the entrance, though I did include some diversity. Some peacebloom and silverleaf is planted near the corners. I find them cheerful.”

Jaina only barely managed to hold back a soft laugh at the deadpan way Sylvanas said that. “And the gift from Alexstrasza?”

“A surprise,” Sylvanas drawled, her voice quickly turning into a mixture between amusement and annoyance. “Trust me, I inquired about it the moment I saw it, but she refused to reveal anything. Even her children don’t know. The best I can make out is that it’s some sort of flower that won’t turn to fruit, judging by the way the stem is growing. But that dragon seems to have a few tricks up her sleeve.” There was a pause as both of the women studied the plant before them, and Sylvanas kept speaking. “Did you have any requests?”

Jaina blinked in surprise, daring a quick look over to Sylvanas. She didn’t seem to be joking or teasing, though, and she would be remiss if she let such an opportunity pass. Perhaps sometime in the future, once Sylvanas’s survival was more well-known and she wasn’t in hot water for allowing her to live, it would be amusing to say that the former Banshee Queen and Warchief of the Horde asked her what plants she wanted to see in her personal garden. Jaina allowed a slight smile at the thought, thinking for a moment about her answer. “Carnations,” she said first. “Those are my favorite flower. I’m also rather fond of starmoss, though I suppose that’d be rather tricky to grow without any stone to grow it on. Tulips and roses can be quite lovely as well.”

It seemed as though she’d managed to strike a nerve, as Sylvanas visibly stiffened. She offered a quick, decisive nod that matched her stance; stiff and lacking any sort of emotion. “Tulips would be hard to grow here as well.” Jaina knew that to be a lie, but she didn’t dare say so. “Everything else, however, could be very manageable. I’m sure if I asked with some semblance of politeness, Alexstrasza would allow me to grow starmoss on one of the little cobblestone bridges nearby.”

“Of course,” Jaina responded quickly, not wanting to cause any unintentional animosity in the friendship that was starting to bud between them. She hesitated for a moment before deciding to change the subject, taking great care not to linger on something that had clearly made Sylvanas uncomfortable. “So… I know Alexstrasza mentioned eventually making your presence known to the world. Have you given that much thought?”

Perhaps that wasn’t any better. Still, Sylvanas seemed to ponder her question for a moment before she responded. “I have not. Any time spent with the Life-Binder has been to acquaint myself with my new home and the other dragons hosting me, as well as, naturally, setting up this garden. Otherwise I’ve been working or sleeping.”

“Sleeping?” Jaina blinked, having to think for a moment about what she knew of the Forsaken. Derek, at least, hadn’t seemed to sleep during his stay with her, nor had he expressed any need or desire to. And though she’d only visited the new construction that had been ordered in Theramore a few times, it seemed as though the Forsaken were constantly out and about, not taking much time at all to rest their bodies or any aching muscles that would plague the living from walking around so much. The confusion must have been clearly written on her face, because Sylvanas raised an eyebrow at her and continued.

“Typically I have no need for such a thing, nor am I able to fall asleep when I would like to, but the Life-Binder’s magic is quite powerful. Not only did her blood manage to fully restore me fairly quickly, but she is also capable of allowing me to rest.” There was a pause, where Sylvanas glanced back to her garden, staring down one of the piles of fine dirt with intense focus. Jaina said nothing, allowing a moment her to gather her thoughts. "It was nice," Sylvanas admitted, and though her voice remained as casual as ever, they was a slight vulnerability to it that Jaina still found herself surprised to hear. It was a hesitant kind of vulnerability; it seemed that even after Sylvanas had confided in her in Grommash Hold, she was still cautious about how much she revealed of herself.

Jaina offered a nod in response, staying quiet for a few moments as she tried to balance the more academic and curious side of her brain with the part of her that wanted to keep Sylvanas’s trust. “If you don’t mind me asking,” she started, already disliking how that sounded, “how did it feel?”

Sylvanas seemed to put a surprising amount of thought into her answer before she spoke. “Odd. The action of sleeping in and of itself did feel… good, in a sense, but not as refreshing as it did when I was living.” She hummed softly, studying the plant that Alexstrasza had gifted her. “It felt as though I simply moved forward in time. I was not tired when I fell asleep, nor was I rested when I awoke. I simply laid there for what felt like a second, absolutely dreamless, before opening my eyes and continuing on with my day." She paused for another second. “I did feel slightly dizzy when I awoke, though it was not an unpleasant feeling.”

“I think that’s how it feels to feel rested,” Jaina offered, unable to stop the smallest of smiles that hardly quirked the edges of her lips up. Still, it was there. “Don’t take my word for it, though. I haven’t had a decent night of sleep in years.”

“I can only imagine,” Sylvanas murmured, drawing her eyes away from the plants to spare Jaina a glance. “I will say, the bed I was afforded here is rather comfortable. You’re free to make use of it, if you so please.”

There was a pause between the two, as Jaina’s eyes widened significantly and Sylvanas seemed to realize the magnitude of what she’d said. Before she could retract her statement, or, heavens forbid, issue an _ apology_, Jaina burst into a fit of laughter that was only half due to how nervous she suddenly found herself. She quickly held up a hand, stopping Sylvanas before she could get a single word out. “I know what you meant,” she said, little huffs of giggles still escaping her. “And I’ll politely decline. In _ both _ regards.”

The cheeky comment earned Jaina a glare, one that was borne of both annoyance _ and _amusement, and it looked as though Sylvanas wanted to continue their conversation. Before she could, however, Xerestrasza’s voice reached them from the other end of the vast gardens. 

“Lady Proudmoore, Sylvanas! My mother has prepared dinner for you and invites you to join her in the dining room. She was just finishing the last garnishes, a few minutes ago, so it should be ready very soon.” 

With her cheeks burning red, Jaina spun around to face the dragon. She was somewhat glad for the distraction, despite the disappointed noise that Sylvanas made. If she knew the elf somewhat well, a thought that was slightly unnerving, she most likely wanted to tease Jaina, if only to cover up her slip up. Though Xerestrasza’s presence seemed to deter her. Instead, she said to Jaina: “Follow me, I’ll lead the way.” 

After Xerestrasza departed to one of the larger buildings, possibly to eat dinner with a part of her family, Sylvanas guided Jaina back to Alexstrasza’s residence. Jaina couldn’t help but notice that the elf seemed to drag her feet as she approached the dining room. Perhaps it was because she knew that Alleria would be there too. The two still didn’t seem to be on better terms, which worried Jaina a bit. They would need to grow closer if Sylvanas was to spend so much time in Wyrmrest Temple. 

Yet all such thoughts were quickly driven from Jaina’s mind when she caught a whiff of the dinner. 

~~~

The food _ smelled _ good.

That was all that Sylvanas could say about it. It certainly looked delicious, and it seemed like her sisters and Jaina enjoyed it enough to forget any and all manners they’d learned growing up in favor of scarfing down as much as possible, but Sylvanas could do naught more than simply look and smell. 

Why was she here? To mingle with her sisters, Alleria’s pet dragon, and Proudmoore? They all seemed perfectly content to talk amongst themselves, seeming to not notice how suddenly quiet and morose Sylvanas had become with the reminder of yet another thing she was no longer allowed to enjoy. Jaina and Vereesa were engrossed in a conversation regarding the latter’s sons and how they fared nowadays, while Alleria and her pet -- or was it the other way around? -- were sitting close and murmuring softly to one another. Sylvanas couldn’t help but stare at her older sister, almost impressed by how open Alexstrasza had managed to get her. Even in life, Alleria had always been a rather closed book, hard to decipher and never terribly willing to reveal any information that she did not deem necessary. It was quite possibly one of the only things that Sylvanas still admired about her.

Alleria seemed to notice her staring, as she met her eyes with a challenging look and a raised eyebrow. Sylvanas responded in turn, prompting an annoyed sigh from the eldest Windrunner. “Was there something you wanted, Sylvanas?”

“Just curious if I’m obligated to stay here. I can’t do much more than smell the food and watch the rest of you gorge yourselves while chattering away. I’m bored.”

Even as Alleria opened her mouth, Alexstrasza spoke. “You are under no obligation to remain here, Sylvanas. However, I would like it if you did. I have a suggestion that I believe may improve your experience.” 

“My experience?” Vereesa and Jaina stopped conversing, both of them glancing over to Sylvanas with curious expressions on their faces. Sylvanas paid them no heed, her eyes narrowing slightly at the dragon. “What experience in particular are you speaking of?”

“Your current… state of being. Your sister and I have been discussing this option over the past few days, and we believe it would greatly improve both your physical and your mental health. It is a big decision, so I do not expect that you make it imme-”

“Spit it out,” Sylvanas interrupted, growing clearly annoyed. Whatever the dragon’s offer was, she was more wary of it than she had been for anything else Alexstrasza had given her, if only because it seemed that Alleria was in on it as well. Her older sister had no good intentions for her, despite her involvement with the only person who had given her a shred of unconditional assistance.

“I can resurrect you.” 

A long silence fell, not even disturbed by Alleria, who had chosen to forego eating a few moments prior to Alexstrasza’s offer. It was only broken when Vereesa dropped her fork with a clatter onto her plate, after which her hasty apologies began. For Sylvanas, it was all a haze. Her younger sister was blabbering on with no one stopping her, apologizing over and over again for gods knew what. Alleria was silent, though even Sylvanas wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing, and Alexstrasza sat beside her with the same damned unconditional and unbreakable kindness in her eyes. She was speaking as well, saying something that Sylvanas couldn’t understand nor bring herself to try to over not only Vereesa, but the noise inside of her own mind, and after what felt like simultaneously a split second and several hours, Sylvanas dared a glance over to Jaina.

The mage’s smile was genuine and encouraging, but Sylvanas found that she couldn’t meet her eyes for more than a few seconds before she stared at the napkin closest to her. Why was she so damned hesitant? She hated every second of her afterlife, even after she’d broken free of Arthas’s control. There was always a lingering pain around that _ awful _scar she carried, and she was all too aware that it would never leave, nor would it ever go fully unnoticed. She could not rest, nor enjoy a fresh breath of air, nor taste her favorite dinners and desserts. Her existence was truly a curse, and even then, Sylvanas wasn’t sure if she wanted to give it up.

Perhaps that was because that was all the living saw it as: a curse. More often than not, they pitied her being, they pitied how she was unable to rest and breathe and taste. They pitied how she was denied her final peace by a power-hungry mongrel. And that was all this offer was based off of: pity. As was Jaina’s encouragement, though she should know better than most that being Forsaken was not always a curse. It had reunited her with her dear brother, after all. 

Sylvanas had half a mind to say that. She even opened her mouth, choking on words that refused to come, before abruptly standing up from the table. Jaina looked surprised, and Sylvanas didn’t bother to glance towards her sister or that pet dragon of hers, even when she spoke. “If you’ll excuse me,” she managed, “I need a moment.” She could hardly hear her own voice as she spoke, but didn’t care. It had managed to shut up both Vereesa and Alexstrasza, who Sylvanas only just realized had been talking about the _ logistics _of all things, and she spun around and marched away with the same grace and flair she often did.

It didn’t surprise her when she found herself in the gardens. Over the past few days, she’d spent a great deal of time there, as it seemed to be the only thing she still had to show for her time on this miserable planet after her initial death. Everything else had been torn away from her - be that the people she used to care for, the reputation she’d built for herself, or the land she’d claimed and the kingdom she’d built. No, all she had were a few dumb souvenirs from Windrunner Spire, a few measly spouts of peacebloom, and whatever the _ fuck _ Alexstrasza had gifted her. 

She felt like she could puke, but was well aware that nothing would come. Nor would tears, and even going on the same rampage that she had a few years prior would be near impossible in the sanctum. She reached out to one of the silverleaf stalks, feeling a strong impulse to crush it between her fingers and tear it out of the soil. But it was her own work, her own orderly garden that laid before her. She let go of the plant and let her hand fall back to along her side. Enraged, partially at her own inability to do anything that made her feel significantly better, she kicked the soil in her garden plot. That did nothing but get grains of dirt in her boots, settling in between her toes and under her socks. 

Sylvanas bared her teeth and hissed. Her eyes traced the arcane patterns on the wall, which shimmered in soft waves of light. If she were alive, she would have been able to feel every shift of energy. But she wasn’t, and Alexstrasza’s words still haunted her. 

_ I can resurrect you. _

Was that not what she had wished for, when her shredded spirit had been stuffed back into a cold body that didn’t feel like hers anymore? Was that not what she had thought about on many sleepless nights, even after she had wrest herself free of the Lich King’s icy grasp? When had she stopped hoping that such a chance would come to her? 

Footsteps behind Sylvanas alerted her to the fact that someone was approaching, and if the heaviness of the steps was any indication, it was a certain Kul Tiran who didn’t seem to like to leave her alone. Sylvanas did not bother attempting to pull herself together. Jaina had seen her on death’s door, something that was, albeit, not terribly rare, and knew that even _ she _could show the occasional emotion. She had little to hide from Proudmoore. 

To her credit, Jaina didn’t say a word until she stood aside Sylvanas, and even then it was a moment before she spoke. “May I ask why you’re hesitant?” She finally did ask, casting the briefest of glances to the elf before she turned her attention once more to the plants before them. “Back in Grommash Hold, you told me that you never wished for this existence. Now that you have a chance to change it - a chance to once again _ live _ and breathe and taste food… why not?”

“Those are… activities that I miss,” Sylvanas admitted, speaking relatively slowly as to give herself a moment to think her words through. “But this offer is far more complicated than that. There are certain implications that I cannot ignore.”

“Implications?” Jaina frowned, turning the slightest bit so she was more or less now facing Sylvanas. The banshee did not do the same, and Jaina huffed a sigh. “Look. I was putting off talking to you about this, to give you some time to adjust to your life here, but Derek is miserable. His only solace has been Calia Menethil, who has blessedly provided him the support he needs in this time of crisis, but even that has not stopped him from wanting to end his unlife every single day. Being Forsaken isn’t a _ good _ thing, Sylvanas, and you of all people have no right to be hesitant in the face of such a generous offer.” 

“Me of all people,” Sylvanas repeated, her voice getting lower. Finally, she turned to face Jaina, and the mage took a step back with the realization of how close they were. Sylvanas’s eyes were alight, a sharp, flaring red meeting a softer blue. “Do tell, _ Proudmoore, _why I of all people should not be complaining when someone offers to erase the name that I have made for myself. For my people. To erase what I have left to show -” she motioned down to her own sickly grey body “- of the pain I’ve endured at the hands of Arthas. At the hands of your Alliance.” She let out a bitter laugh. “I’ll admit, it’s a relief to know what you truly think of the Forsaken. That our existences are not a good thing.”

“That is _ not _ what I meant.” Jaina took a steadying breath. It was one that was well needed, and obvious to Sylvanas that it was, as she’d practically growled out of rage. It took only a moment, but her voice was considerably calmer when she spoke again, and Sylvanas could _ almost _ picture her with pure blonde hair instead of the striking white she now wore. “I’m not saying that being Forsaken is not a good thing. I’m simply stating that, right now, there are better options for you. You are being handed this opportunity with no conditions. Alexstrasza is not demanding that you give her something in return.” She paused again, though this time it was not to calm herself, nor to even catch her breath. Her eyes flickered up to Sylvanas’s, the incredibly faint and lingering blue glow making the elf squint the slightest bit. It took a moment for her to speak again, and for that moment, Sylvanas felt… almost _ studied, _ in a way, beneath the mage’s gaze. She didn’t dare to break their eye contact, though, and simply watched as those blue eyes took in every detail of her sharp features. “I don’t want to argue over Derek, nor do I want to speak with you about what you did to him yet. It was a misstep to bring that up, and I apologize.” Sylvanas did not get a chance to respond as Jaina continued. “This opportunity is free. I know that’s hard for you to accept, but you need to take it. Maybe… Maybe it’s your first step towards healing Azeroth, after all of the damage done to it in these past few years. But we both know that, while you may have made an identity in being Forsaken, you don’t like it. And this is your _ real _ second chance at life.”

In that moment, there was nothing and no one that Sylvanas hated more in the universe than the Lord Admiral of Kul Tiras, Lady Jaina Proudmoore.

But she was _ right. _

Perhaps she hated that more; the mage’s terrible habit of being right about things. But now was not the time to dwell on that, not when said mage looked up at her expectantly. What was she to say? Just outright admit that Jaina was right? Laughable. Instead she stared back, still refusing to break their eye contact, for a few seconds. “I’ll admit that you make a point.” A good or bad one, she purposefully omitted, but by the way Jaina ever so slightly lit up, Sylvanas assumed that she knew. “But what am I to say to the Forsaken? All I’ve told them these past thirteen years was that while the circumstances of the making of our kind was unideal at best, they should be proud of themselves and proud of the fact that they are Forsaken. That they have been given a second chance.” She paused, finally averting her eye contact. For a moment, she considered continuing, but decided instead to allow Jaina to speak.

It took a second, and when she did, her voice was far less serious and far more… concerned, almost? Regardless of the tone that she could not _ quite _ place, it snapped her back to reality. “Sylvanas… they tried to kill you.”

That made her back stiffen, and she quickly shot a glare to Jaina. “You’re a fool if you truly think that all of them have turned on me. I’m more than willing to stake that most of them are still, at heart, loyal.” Her typical tone, full of arrogance and slight teasing, had returned, and Sylvanas felt her muscles relax the _ slightest _ bit. _ “Fine,” _she all but purred, glancing once more to the plant gifted to her by Alexstrasza. “I will take the dragon’s offer.”

“Fine,” Jaina said in return, then turned and left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, sorry for the irregular updates. Conservatory is hard but it's not horrible so there's that. If anyone finds the she-ra reference in this chapter, they get virtual cookies from me. -brazenedMinstrel
> 
> Yea this semester's been rough but after finals, I should have more time to write. -xore


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks to indie for beta-reading!
> 
> Luna drew some art from chapter 6! https://lunamaniac94.tumblr.com/post/189472823948/sketch-drawings-of-scenes-from-enduring-pain-with

_ “It is better to suffer once than to be in perpetual apprehension.” - Julius Caesar _

Sylvanas slept well, considering what she was about to do. Then again, with Alexstrasza’s spell, it was quite unlikely that she would have any sort of fitful sleep. The dragon had long since proven herself to be overwhelmingly - and almost unbearingly - altruistic. Still, it was nice to wake up without being disturbed by Alleria, and instead be allowed to spend a few minutes simply enjoying the peaceful atmosphere of the room. While she didn’t possess any body heat, the blankets had warmed from the magical heat that the wards of the Sanctum provided. They were so comfortable that she tugged them up to her chin and turned on her side, facing away from the door, trying to prolong her rest a bit longer. She thought about what Alexstrasza had said when she and Jaina had returned to the supper table just a few nights before. 

_ “I fear I cannot complete the process of resurrection at once, Sylvanas. Your situation is… fairly unique.” _

The undead elf had gotten immediately irritated, demanding that the Life-Binder stopped spinning words around the core of the matter. In return, Alexstrasza had looked her in the eyes. It had nearly seemed as if her golden eyes had flared and, for a moment, Sylvanas was acutely reminded that the woman was the Red Aspect. She has not forgotten how the Life-Binder’s very presence had caused all the scars on her body to tingle, when she had come to Windrunner Spire, and she would be loathe to forget how much sheer power the dragon held by herself, let alone how much power all of her children and the other members of her flight held.

_ “Sylvanas… your body is damaged. The scars that were inflicted upon you before you died haven’t healed in a natural way. Your soul is damaged as well. Badly. Nearly… disconnected from your body, bound by energies of a sinister nature. If I were to mend both at the same time, there is a high chance that the sheer amount of life-giving powers would restore your flesh, but not mend your wounds.” _ Whilst saying that, Alexstrasza had drawn a line over her own stomach. _ “You would bleed to death before I would be able to finish the spell. Or perhaps… perhaps your spirit, your banshee form, would escape in its entirety, leaving a living body… but one without a soul.” _

Alexstrasza’s eyes hadn’t been condescending or scrutinising, they hadn’t even been angry. Instead, there had been a kind of plain honesty in them that unnerved Sylvanas more than anything else. The Life-Binder was serious, she knew what she was doing. She did not look old, but the sheer weight of her words had made Sylvanas remember just how ancient she was. She had left the dining room soon afterwards, muttering her rather disgruntled goodbyes to Jaina before departing for her own room. 

When Alexstrasza had come to put her to sleep sometime after that, the dragon queen had apologized, explaining that she had not meant to scare Sylvanas. In return, the elf had mumbled that she wasn’t afraid, closing her eyes and pretending that the sleeping spell washed over her much more quickly than it actually did. Though, when she had felt the heavy sleep slowly claim her, she had very nearly whimpered out of fear. Her soul had been taken from her body once; to be alive without it would be the worst fate she could imagine. 

She had to speak about it with Alexstrasza before going through with it. The past few days, she’d hardly seen the woman, and whenever she had, she had always been on the arms of her sister. Even when the dragon came to put her to sleep, Alleria had been there, and Sylvanas would sooner return to the hell she’d seen so many years ago than admit any sort of hesitation or weakness to her sister. It almost felt as though Alleria was showing her off, bragging wordlessly that, no matter what kindness Alexstrasza offered Sylvanas, she would forever be loyal to the eldest Windrunner. But today she would have her banshee form bound to her body permanently, and Sylvanas had to know that there was no possibility of the process going awry. She troubled herself little with any thoughts of bathing or even changing her clothes as she left her room, going immediately to Alexstrasza’s quarters, but the dragon was not there. The only being she found there was Alleria, who was walking around in her underwear, combing tangles out of her blonde hair. 

“Where’s your pet dragon?” Sylvanas asked. “And for Belore’s sake, put on some clothes.” 

Alleria bared her fangs in a hiss. “Don’t walk in on me, then. Learn to knock like a decent person.” Before Sylvanas had the chance to say that Alexstrasza usually left the door open, she continued. “_My love _ is readying the site where that gross screeching spirit of yours will be put back into your body. She will be busy for a few hours. Get lost.” 

“And do what?” Sylvanas bit back. “The cabins are built, I already tended to my garden yesterday and they won’t let me near the hatchery to help until I’ve been brought back to life in full.” 

“Yes, because the hatchery is awash with nourishing life magic and the absolute last thing that should be in there is an undead.” While putting the brush on the nightstand, Alleria sighed, her hands moving up to absentmindedly pull a few chunks of her fine hair into a braid. “I don’t know, go fly around in the Sanctum or something. It’s the last day you can do that.” 

She was right. Oh, how Sylvanas hated that she was right. After a smouldering glare at her sister, she marched out of the building, onto the terrace outside. There, she wasn’t able to take two steps without nearly stumbling over a small, sitting figure. A toy castle and a few toy soldiers scattered over the marble of the terrace. Two of the five younger members of the flight stared at her with big eyes. A boy with short blonde hair, which looked rather like an unruly stack of hay. Two small horns stuck out, just above his ears. The other child was a girl, with light brown hair that seemed to shine golden in the light of the Ruby Sanctum. For a moment, Sylvanas thought that they were going to cry. Then the boy stood, extending a pudgy hand in Sylvanas’s direction.

“Mum said I should politely introduce myself to the new grey elf lady!” he proclaimed. “My name’s Theranostraz and I hatched last summer after my egg was thought to be dead for years. My favorite color is green, but I really like red too. And orange. Oh, and I’m still learning how to fly, but Mum said that I’m really pro- promising.” 

_ Someone had to have taught him to say those words. Much too eloquent for a child, and the way he stumbled over the word ‘promising’ made it sound memorized_, Sylvanas mused. She drew her lips into a snarl, but the little dragon went on before she could say anything.

“This is my sister, Lunastrasza… She’s almost two!” He paused for a moment, suddenly looking slightly bashful, and Lunastrasza poked at his leg. “_Uhm, _ can you screech again for us? It was cool!” 

“No,” Sylvanas hissed, then swiftly stepped away from the two and turned her gaze to the sky. 

Unsurprisingly, the two followed her, chatting all the way as she attempted to put enough distance between herself and the children. “Can the mage lady make snow again? The elf with silver hair said she’d bring her sons here, can she do that now? Where is mum? Can she let us swing from her horns again?”

Sylvanas snarled, which left the two children completely unfazed. “Leave me be.”

“You won’t play with us?” the girl asked timidly. Her eyes were the same bronze colour as Alexstrasza's, they stood wide and innocent. 

In response, Sylvanas brusquely shook her head and took off, unfurling her banshee form for a final time, spiralling upwards. Instantly, the two dragonlings changed to their true forms, flapping their wings with all their strength to keep up with Sylvanas. Yet the banshee was much quicker than them, leaving them behind within seconds. 

It was the closest thing she had to being truly free. As she let her powers carry her above the sanctum, away from the noisily flapping wings of the little dragons and the scurrying about of the rest of the flight, she thought about what freedom truly meant to her. Essentially, she was trapped in Wyrmrest Temple. Alexstrasza couldn’t offer her protection outside it. Was safety of more value to her than true freedom? She knew that she couldn’t take a few steps outside before being hunted down by any one of the enemies she had made. And that seemed to include everyone but the Red Dragonflight, Jaina, and Vereesa. Even Alleria seemed to fall into the larger category.

From above, the Sanctum looked small. A round plane filled with houses, storage buildings and other accommodations for the dragonflight. Several rivers flowed through the lush fields like arteries of life. There was a small patch of forest on the west side, bordering the mountains that surrounded the sanctum. Sylvanas hadn’t noticed that yet. She could see the orchards in which she had worked a few days prior, as well as the portal that lead to Wyrmrest Temple, and she could see several entrances to caves in the mountains. Those led to the hatchery, hot springs, and many more things that the dragons refused to tell her about.

No, it wasn’t freedom. But it was safe. With her still weakened, faulty body, she needed it. 

Sylvanas flew in slow circles above the Sanctum for a long time, attempting to commit the feeling of free flight to memory forever. The children had gone back to playing with their toy castles and soldiers. A few drakes were carrying some heavy cargo from a pile next to the portal to one of the storage buildings. Suddenly, she found herself wondering whether it was food and if she would be able to eat some of it after today. The food that Alexstrasza had served during Jaina’s last visit had looked and smelled so good, reminding Sylvanas of all of the foods she’d loved during her life that no longer tasted like anything. She’d always had quite the sweet tooth, even more so than Vereesa, and she quickly found that her flight was slowing even further the more she thought about the foods she’d enjoyed in life. 

She didn’t notice Xerestrasza flying through the air in her true form, slowly coming up beneath her, until the slight gusts of breeze pushed the flowy clothes she had on to brush against her skin. The banshee did not bother to move aside. Trapped in safety as she may be, she still held onto her pride.

Yet Xerestrasza stopped a few feet underneath her. “My mother has readied the site,” she said, sending an unexpected amount of anxiety coursing through Sylvanas’s veins and to her stomach. “She requested to retrieve you. If you need a bit more time, I could-”

“No, I have accepted my… my fate,” Sylvanas snapped, acutely aware of how raspy and ethereal her banshee form made her voice.

“Then you may follow me.” With those words, the Dragon Queen’s daughter turned and slowly glided downwards, spiralling into the direction of the mountains that encircled the Ruby Sanctum. 

More slowly, though she did not dare to call it hesitantly, Sylvanas followed. From the corners of her eyes, she saw the black smoke of her banshee form swirl. It would likely be the last time she saw that. The last time she heard the edge that it gave her voice. The last time she felt the pull of her disjointed spirit whenever she allowed it to take her over. Sylvanas paused before landing behind Xerestrasza. When she restrained her banshee form again, she suddenly felt an intense pull in her chest. It was nearly as if someone was pressing down on her heart. The same feelings she’d had when first meeting Alexstrasza at Windrunner Spire, but increased tenfold. 

“Sylvanas, are you coming? Everyone has arrived already.” 

She could not see Xerestrasza anymore. The dragon’s voice came from a narrow entrance in the solid rock wall. Clenching her hands, her tender skin protected by tough wrappings of red cloth, the elf followed. She wondered who exactly “everyone” was. The small tunnel was dark, with only her elven vision providing enough sight. It was just broad enough for the Life-Binder to enter, but Sylvanas couldn’t stretch out her arms fully in any direction.

A torch was placed in a little crevice, spluttering sparks. The tunnel suddenly made a sharp bend, and before she knew it, Sylvanas stood at the mouth of a cavern. Large braziers burnt with roaring flames. Evidently, Alexstrasza had put incense of sorts in them, since they smelled heady, of camphor, spices and earth. Whitish smoke billowed upwards, into the darkness above them, parting against sharp stalactites. Green runes glowed along the walls, pulsating like beating hearts.

Sylvanas gasped. She hastily shut her mouth, not wanting anyone to see her in such stupor. Alexstrasza stood on the far end of the long, narrow cave. She had her back turned to the elf, and was in the process of undoing the belt of a heavy maroon robe. As she handed it to Lirastrasza, who folded it and put it on a small stone plateau, the Life-Binder took handfuls of water from a shallow dish that stood on a tripod next to her. She washed her arms and her face, then splashed water over her shoulders and neck. It dripped down her back, now bare par two leather straps and a belt around her midriff. As she turned, Sylvanas could see that her eyes were glowing a dark bronze. The light from the braziers cut dark shadows over her sculpted arms and shoulders, shrouding half of her face in shadows. In the simple clothing, nothing more than trousers and a top with minimal embroidery, she looked unbelievably ancient. And powerful. So powerful that Sylvanas could feel the air move when the Dragon Queen turned. She nearly stumbled back into the tunnel. 

Alleria was in the cave too, standing in the shadows that were cast by an overhanging rock that was jutting out from the wall at a harsh angle. Her blue eyes glowed too, though for some reason, Alexstrasza’s seemed brighter. Sylvanas wondered what her sister was even doing there. Perhaps she had just come to watch her peril. Or maybe her beloved had persuaded her. Whatever the case, as soon as Sylvanas looked at her sister, Alleria averted her eyes. She even seemed to sigh, though the lack of light made it hard to tell. 

As two of her daughters took their place by their mother’s side, the Life-Binder beckoned Sylvanas to step forth. Now she was being stared down by three dragons, instead of the usual one. The two daughters of the Dragon Queen wore a robe of red, thin fabric, that was loosely fastened around their waists, so the front was open. Underneath, they wore the same simple vest as their mother. For some reason she dared not dwell too much on, it made Sylvanas supremely nervous to be watched by three pairs of dark bronze eyes. 

“What a lovely spot for me to return to life,” Sylvanas drawled, forcing any and all feelings of nervousness down, allowing her eyes to dart around the narrow cave even as she slowly paced towards the rest of the women in the room. To her credit, it did seem like Alexstrasza had _ tried _ to make the space bearable. But it was still cramped and too grimy for Sylvanas’s liking. Belore, how in the _ world _ had she managed to live in the Undercity for so long?

That mattered little now. The land and city she’d stolen from the _ king _ was in ruins, filled to the brim with blight, and it would do her no good to think more about her previous failings. Nothing could be done about that now, and she _ supposed _that Proudmoore had a point. 

If she truly did, though, why was she so… cautious? Not cautious, necessarily, but hesitant. _ Worried. _She still hadn’t spoken with Alexstrasza about the exact procedure of the ritual, but something told her that she could not back out of it anymore. 

_ “Sylvanas Windrunner.” _

Alexstrasza didn’t raise her voice. 

She didn’t raise her voice and yet the walls and floor of the cavern seemed to shake in time with her words. Even the flames in the braziers roared in tandem. Sylvanas swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling dry. The entire cavern seemed to be drenched in a power so ancient that she felt like a tiny sapling in the shadow of a gigantic tree. It took her a few moments before she realized that it was the power of life itself that was so prevalent in the air. The power of life, that ebbed and flowed with the Life-Binder’s every move. 

“I am glad that you are here. That you have taken the first step on this path. Today, your spirit will be bound to your body again, so that you may leave this sacred cavern as an undead, not as a banshee.” 

Before Sylvanas could respond, though she wasn’t sure what kind of response would even be appropriate, Alexstrasza raised her arms. At her gesture, the cave shook. Alleria hastily stepped away from the wall and Sylvanas nearly lost her balance. The Life-Binder’s eyes flared green as the ground at her feet split open. The rock cracked and rumbled as a cloud of dust billowed upwards. Alleria quickly buried her nose and mouth in her sleeve to avoid swallowing or breathing in any of it. When it had settled, a narrow altar of dark stone took up most of the middle of the cavern. It wasn’t carved or hewn out. No, it looked as if molten lava had settled into the vaguely rectangular shape by itself. There were little indents in the top of the otherwise smooth stone. Two at one end and a larger one at the other. Heels and a head, Sylvanas realized. Many others had lain there before she would. For healing, for resurrection, or otherwise, she couldn’t know. 

When Alexstrasza told her to undress to her underwear, Sylvanas did so with great apprehension. While she had her back turned to Alleria, she knew that the scar she carried from Frostmourne was visible on both sides of her body. The sword has gone right through her, after all. And as if on cue, she heard a disgusted noise behind her as she sat down on the cool black rock. It somehow hurt her more than she would admit, even only to herself.

The two daughters of the Life-Binder stepped back a few paces, until they stood in the shadows, close to the wall of the cavern. Alexstrasza laid a hand on Sylvanas’s collarbone, pushing her down onto the altar until she laid on her back. She didn’t speak, only softly humming when Sylvanas had laid down. It took the elf all her willpower not to squirm under the dragon’s warm hand. Alexstrasza let her go, then softly pressed her finger down above her unbeating heart. A spot of green light was left on her skin, and another as the Life-Binder repeated the movement on the other side of her chest. She did it once more, now a few inches above Sylvanas’s navel, in the center of the scar that split her torso. 

Alexstrasza lifted her hand, hovering it just above Sylvanas’s chest and flexing it to a fist. From the three points, a slight pull radiated outwards. It was not painful, but enough to make Sylvanas utter a small noise in the back of her throat. She felt the Life-Binder’s magic seep in under her skin, reacting to the dark powers than kept her body functioning. They swirled, like two different currents, like water and oil. It seemed as if the dragon felt the same, since she opened her fist and let the energy dissipate. 

“Sylvanas, I must see your banshee form now,” she said. Perhaps it was an illusion of the atmosphere in the cavern, but her voice seemed much deeper than before. While that made it no less calming, a surge of anxiety still washed over Sylvanas as she slowly let go of her spirit, though she forced the feeling down. The underside of her spirit remained connected to her body, but the other part rose up to look Alexstrasza into the eyes, cocking her head and challenging the dragon’s bronze eyes with her own blazing red ones. 

~~~

_ “Sylv?” Though Alleria had tried her best to keep her voice soft and non intruding, that didn’t stop her younger sister from nearly jumping out of her skin. Though she managed to stay upright, the jar of jam she’d been holding slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor. The sound alone made Sylvanas jump back, and were it not for Alleria’s quick and graceful reflexes, the middle Windrunner sister would have fallen straight to the floor due to the lack of balance she currently possessed. _

_ Even once Alleria made sure her sister was okay, she didn’t set Sylvanas down, and instead lifted her up from beneath her arms to set her up on the counter. That came much to Sylvanas’s dismay, as she was all too used to being independent and taking care of herself, but Alleria shot her a sharp glare that her sister seemed too tired to dispute. “Stay put. You’re in no shape to be walking about right now.” Ever so carefully, Alleria knelt down, gathering the larger shards of glass. She set them far back on the opposite counter, making a mental note to toss them away once she’d dealt with the mess and with her sister. After she’d wiped up the jam from the floor, she stood again, looking over to Sylvanas. “What were you trying to make?” _

_ “Nothing,” Sylvanas murmured, crossing her arms over her chest. Typically her glare would be enough to prompt a slight laugh from Alleria, but she looked so pathetic that the eldest Windrunner sister couldn’t bring herself to laugh at her little sister. “I was gonna get a spoon and eat the jam straight from the jar.” _

_ “Straight from the- oh Belore…” Alleria pinched the bridge of her nose, fighting off a headache that was quickly threatening to cripple her. “You’re sick. You need to eat something with real substance.” Though her words were stern and not as kindly said as they could have been, Alleria couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. She’d been the one to originally come down with the flu, but it had passed through her system in a matter of a few days. She’d hardly felt it. But Sylvanas had managed to catch it from her, and now it had been wracking her younger sister for what was almost a week. _

_ Flu season in Quel’thalas was, unfortunately, quite dangerous and often deadly, as ear infections often accompanied whatever strain was potent in any given year. These were some of the rare times when high elves actually envied humans, as their small ears allowed them to power through whatever ailed them. Elves, with their long, graceful ears, were far more susceptible to losing their balance entirely, and well-trained rangers - or rangers in training - were no exception. Even simply sitting on the counter was causing Sylvanas to sway back and forth almost dangerously, and Alleria couldn’t help but hate that she was the eldest child. With both of her parents out working for the day, she was in charge of her younger sisters, but Sylvanas’s illness was far above her caliber. _

_ Worse yet, Sylvanas was stubborn, and was quickly moving to get off of the counter. “I’m _ fine_,” she insisted, wobbling back to their enchanted ice box to gather another jar of jam. Instead of going to get a spoon, she forced the lid off and stuck her first two fingers deep inside, gathering as much jam on them as she could before pulling them out and sucking them clean. “Besides, food’ll make me puke.” _

_ “Jam won’t be any better,” Alleria muttered, snatching the jar from her sister’s hand. As Sylvanas tried to grab it back from her, she quickly slid it up onto a high shelf, and scooped up her little sister instead. “Plus all of your vomit will be red.” She smiled at Sylvanas’s little giggle, and started marching her sister to her room. “You need real food and rest. Your bed’s the most comfortable one in the house with all those pillows you have, and I can make you something to eat, okay?” _

_ There was a pause as Sylvanas seemingly considered her options, though Alleria did not wait for a response as she carefully sat her sister down in her bed and pulled the covers over her. “Fine,” Sylvanas said after a moment. “But I want jam in my meal.” _

_ Toasted bread with a minute amount of jam wouldn’t be the worst thing for Sylvanas to eat, Alleria decided, and she was able to resist an eye roll as she nodded her agreement. “I can do that.” She gently pushed Sylvanas’s shoulders, forcing her to lay back against her massive pillows. “But if you move, there won’t be any jam, and I’ll hide all of it for the next month.” _

_ Another pause filled the room, this one slightly longer as Sylvanas stared up at her sister, shock and betrayal clear on her face. “You’re cruel,” she finally said. _

_ Considering that agreement enough, Alleria left, going to fix the food for her sister. _

~~~

“Ah, I see,” Alexstrasza murmured, as she carefully inspected both Sylvanas’s spirit and body. She put her hand on the grey skin of the undead’s stomach, something that Sylvanas couldn’t feel, as disconnected from her body as she was. Very nearly, she found herself wishing that she could. 

The Dragon Queen brought her hand down onto various spots on Sylvanas’s torso and limbs. Every time, she called upon her powers, that glowed and shimmered within her palm. The kind of magic that she used seemed more like a liquid than the usual fumes and mist of the arcane. Another indication that this was something ancient, and wholly out of Sylvanas’s knowledge. Every time Alexstrasza pulled her hand away, her frown deepened. When she finally repeated the movement on the large scar, Sylvanas did feel the prickle of her magic. Her smoke roiled as she turned around to better see what the Life-Binder was doing. The dragon’s eyes briefly glowed green, before she stepped away, slowly shaking her head. 

Instantly, her daughters were by her side, washing her arms and hands with a damp cloth, wiping off the sweat that had since accumulated. Sylvanas wondered briefly if it was all that warm in the cave, since Alleria was in her full armour. After washing the sheen of sweat off her forehead with water from the shallow dish, Alexstrasza cleared her throat. 

“The energy that binds your spirit to your body is of the Lich King. It is contrary to my own,” she said, once again approaching Sylvanas. “I must remove it before I can continue the process of resurrection.” 

The Lich King’s powers. His death to the Red Aspect’s life. If Sylvanas had possessed breath, it would have frozen in her lungs. If she’d had a heartbeat, it would have spiked. She remembered the icy cold of Arthas’s magic, when he had torn her spirit from her body. And when he had put it back into that near unrecognizable corpse. She had thought that it would tear her very soul asunder all over again. Instead, it had bound her into his chains. As the Life-Binder’s hand glowed green, all Sylvanas could think of were the bands of icy energy that had trapped her, so many years ago. 

But no sooner had she made a single move to get away from Alexstrasza’s outstretched hand or the Life-Binder grabbed her spirit. She reached into the banshee’s form, grabbing onto something deep within her chest. Though Sylvanas instinctively struggled against her grasp, she was absolutely no match for the Aspect’s strength. There was an almost sorrowful look in Alexstrasza’s eyes as she whispered: “I’m sorry.” 

Then she pulled. 

The binds that the Lich King had put in place all those years ago strained, sending flashes of cold and pain through Sylvanas’s form. She could see her body seize beneath her on the altar, though the Life-Binder held her hand securely in place. Trails of icily blue light crept into the green veins which had started to appear on her arms. The Dragon Queen snarled, her long fangs on full display before Sylvanas’s frightened red eyes. 

“Let her go,” she growled. 

The flickering fire in the braziers suddenly roared and flashed green, in tandem with the Aspect’s eyes. She pulled harder, and Sylvanas slowly but surely felt her icy chains give. Faintly, she realized that she was screaming, though her voice sounded strangely disconnected. The muscles in Alexstrasza’s upper arm flexed as she yanked Sylvanas’s form towards her. Something snapped deep within the banshee and she wailed in agony as fire took over the cold. 

From the edges of her vision, she saw the two younger red dragons clasp their hands over their ears to shield themselves from the screech. Alexstrasza stood her ground, not giving an inch as she warred with the last shreds of the Lich King’s power within Sylvanas. For the banshee, it felt as if her form was torn in two by fire and ice. A brief glance at her body told her that it had nearly fallen off the altar in its convulsions. She saw a green shadow step forward. Alleria had taken a single step closer to the altar, one hand hesitantly in the air. Sylvanas didn’t know why. She only knew that the Life-Binder had her soul within her grasp, one arm outstretched upwards, embedded deeply within the banshee’s form, the other balled into a fist as she combatted Arthas’s powers with all her might. 

Sylvanas’s vision filled with red as she heard Alexstrasza growl in her Draconic language. Her eyes were two deep green flames as they bored into the undead’s. She snarled once more, then sharply yanked her arm upwards and tore the banshee form out of Sylvanas’s body. 

~~~

_ By the time Alleria arrived back with her food, Sylvanas looked considerably worse. Briefly, the eldest of the Windrunner sisters had to wonder if her middle sister had managed to get even sicker in the few minutes she’d been gone, but that didn’t seem very likely. She was still in bed, with the window shut tightly. The abnormally cold weather was locked outside and, even so, Sylvanas was still tucked tightly into her bed. _

_ “Did you get up?” Though she looked to be in the same position as she’d been in fifteen minutes prior, Alleria still had to ask. Sylvanas was, after all, the sibling most infamous for getting herself into trouble, whether that was in the form of eating the jams - that their mother had made for the entire family - by the handful or climbing the vines that scaled the Spire, she had a wild streak that neither of her sisters nor her brother could seem to live up to. It would come as absolutely no surprise whatsoever if she had decided to move about. _

_ “No,” Sylvanas insisted. She sounded as though she was attempting to be annoyed, but was too tired and… scared to actually hold any irritability. She tried very hard to hide her slight fear, but the blush dusting her cheeks and the way she avoided Alleria’s eyes gave it away. Sylvanas had always liked to be on top of the situation, strutting around like she was already a fully trained ranger, chin up and proud steps. Yet now, she was anything but. _

_ When Alleria sat down on the bed and handed her the bread, Sylvanas shivered as she reached out for a slice. Her hands shook as she ate, careful not to move her head too much, or be hit by another wave of dizziness. It was then that Alleria spotted a fingerprint-shaped blotch of jam on the bedpost. And another decorated the wall next to her desk. Alleria’s blue eyes slowly drifted over to Sylvanas, who was stuffing her mouth with bread. _

_ “You moved,” she said, drawing up one eyebrow as her little sister swallowed her bite. “There’s jam stains on the bedpost and the wall. A true ranger always covers her tracks. What did you want to do anyways?” _

_ “Wanna get more blankets,” Sylvanas mumbled around another big mouthful of bread with jam. “It’s cold. But I fell when I was out of the bed so I went back.” She shuffled underneath the blankets, trying to bury further into them without dropping her slice of toast or spreading crumbs everywhere. _

_ Alleria couldn’t help but let a lopsided smile take over her features. As sad as Sylvanas was with her red nose and droopy ears from the cold she had caught, there was something adorable in the little elf. “I’ll get you some more blankets,” she said, putting the bread with the remaining jam on Sylvanas’s nightstand while walking up to the closet. There, Sylvanas had another hoard of pillows, blankets, and entirely too many soft towels. “You could outdo a dragon,” she mumbled quietly. _

_ Apparently Sylvanas’s ears weren’t so plugged that she couldn’t hear that. “You’re just jealous!” she called out in the shrillest voice she could manage in her ill state. She was pulling a most adorable pout when Alleria looked back at her. _

_ “I could just take one of these… No one would notice. Least of all you.” She fished an oddly long pillow out of the mass on the upper planks of the closet. It was meant for one of the benches they put outside in the summer. Their mother would want it back, but that was something Alleria would sort out later. Finally, she found a thick quilt that would surely keep her little sister warm. _

_ Surprisingly, Sylvanas had managed to avoid spilling bread with jam everywhere. She had eaten it all, and was now curled up under the blankets, one little bundle of miserable elf. A soft, equally miserable whine came from her throat when Alleria covered her up with the second blanket, while she promised to light the fireplace too. She hoped that Sylvanas would go to sleep soon, since she needed the rest. Though if she knew her little sister well, she would absolutely not do that. Well, she could keep hoping. _

_ Glancing outside while closing the curtains, Alleria noticed that the sun was slowly sinking from its highest position. Very nearly, she had forgotten about the fact that Vereesa had to do her afternoon nap. At least one sister was easier to get to go to sleep than the other. As she turned back to the bed, where Sylvanas was no longer squirming around, instead seemingly having settled, Alleria said: “I’m going to check if Vereesa is napping. Minn’da will scorn me if she falls asleep during after dinner chores again.” _

_ “Wait! Alleria!” Sylvanas called out when her elder sister already had her hand on the door knob. “D-don’t leave…” Her voice petered out into a cough and Alleria hurried back to the bed, softly rubbing the base of Sylvanas’s ear to calm her down. It seemed to work, as the tears that were brimming in her little sister’s eyes did not flow over her cheeks and she was already starting to stifle her sniffling. _

_ “I’m not leaving,” she whispered. “I’ll be back before you know it.” _

~~~

She was free. 

Suspended in Alexstrasza’s grasp, Sylvanas could feel her banshee form dissipate. It was as if she was slowly dissolving, with her only connection to the world being the Life-Binder’s warm hand, which still held onto something in her chest. That seemed to be the only thing she felt, however, as her senses were muted. Nearly blinded, with the noises in the cavern being a vague buzz to her, she felt helpless. She _ despised _being helpless, more than anything else in the world, yet she couldn’t find the strength to resist. 

She was warm. 

Oddly comfortable, as Alexstrasza seemed to embrace her, perhaps only to make sure that she didn’t evaporate. Unlike her near death in Grommash Hold, she didn’t feel pain anymore. A kind of peace overtook her as she floated in the Dragon Queen’s grasp. Briefly, the cavern came into focus again. Alexstrasza had a small smile on her lips as she cupped Sylvanas’s face with a hand. She was speaking, the banshee vaguely registered. Though she couldn’t understand the words, they felt comforting, as though Alexstrasza was able to channel that energy into the air around them.

Alleria seemed frozen behind her, eyeing the body on the altar. Her eyebrows were pinched very tightly together and her face seemed to be torn somewhere between pity and anger. She was also speaking, saying something to her wife, who briefly glanced at her and nodded. Then Alleria knelt down beside the black rock of the altar, very slowly and very hesitantly. She squeezed her eyes shut, one hand hovering over the grey skin of the body’s upper arm, before laying it on the cold flesh. Sylvanas couldn’t feel it, yet for a reason she couldn’t quite grasp, she appreciated the gesture. 

Once more, the world briefly became clear. For a few seconds, the flames in the braziers weren’t blurred green shapes. She felt a flash of the moist warmth in the cavern. She heard Alleria talk.

“It’s like I’m touching a corpse,” her elder sister said. “I mean... I am. But this feels weird. Wrong.”

“What happened to her was wrong, my dearest,” Alexstrasza answered. She sounded tired. That wasn’t right, in the banshee’s ears. Why did she sound so tired? “But the last traces of his power are removed now. She will be alright.”

Alleria’s ears perked up and she softly squeezed the body’s arm. Her voice had a slightly panicked edge when she spoke up again. “Will she?” Something in her voice sounded oddly _ hopeful, _ and Sylvanas couldn’t tell if she appreciated that or hated it. While Alleria had never been the sibling she was the closest to, as that title had been reserved for Vereesa and Vereesa alone, they had once been close. Even closer than it seemed Alleria and Vereesa were now, as Sylvanas could almost _ feel _ the unseeable barrier ever so slightly separating them that the Dark Portal had created. No amount of babysitting Arator could make up for it. Alleria spoke again, snapping Sylvanas out of her thoughts. “Sylvanas, can you hear me?” She hesitated. “Lady Moon?”

The banshee knew that she made a sound, one that was between a gasp and a wheeze. No words managed to come out of her mouth, even as she tried to reach for her sister. Alleria rose to her feet at that, reaching out herself, worry written all over her face now. But Alexstrasza stopped her, though her words blurred in Sylvanas’s ears, swiveling around her as simply disjointed noises. Had she said “it’s better if you stay with her”? 

Alexstrasza let her go, slowly and carefully. The warmth faded away, and the banshee remembered how the Lich King had instilled his icy powers in her soul. Those were gone now, as was his voice in her mind and his will in her body. Still, she felt colder than the warm cavern should have made possible. It was as if all the rage and grief she had held as a banshee before had ebbed away, leaving… very little. An empty shell. Something that felt as if it would fade away if she was out of the Life-Binder’s grasp for a long time. The emptiness quickly became pressing, uncomfortable. She felt panic slowly starting to bubble up in her chest and began to think that she would even prefer her elder sister’s touch to this nothingness. 

As the Red Aspect walked over to the altar, she brought the tips of her fingers to rest against those of her other hand. The veins in her arms glowed green as the power of life itself condensed into threads of magic, which she spun into the air as she moved her hands apart. Instinctively, the banshee felt herself drawn to them. She hovered a little closer, watching as the small smile that had graced Alexstrasza’s lips faded into a concerned frown, as the Life-Binder pursed her lips and spun more threads of energy into the air. She held them in between her fingertips and then she brought them down across the chest of the body beneath her. Two in a cross, diagonally over her ribs. Three bands lower down, over the scar that split her torso. Then two crossed over both of her knees. 

The banshee started to feel uneasy. While the energy was very different, the binds started to remind her of the chains that Arthas had imprisoned her with. The smoke that built her form started whirling restlessly as Alexstrasza finished weaving the lines over her body. She saw Alleria’s ears flick sharply as her sister averted her eyes from the corpse to look at the banshee. Her blue eyes flitted between the body and spirit of what was supposed to be her sister for a few moments. As Alexstrasza wiped the sweat off her forehead and took a few deep breaths, Alleria slowly stood. She walked up to the banshee and found her red eyes, a frown and a snarl on her face. Then her expression softened, just a little. 

“Sylvanas…” she quietly said. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, licking her dry lips with her tongue while she sought for words. She looked ashamed, and Sylvanas’s snarl only grew. Of _ course _ Alleria would be ashamed to even speak with her. “Don’t be… afraid. I - I talked with Alexstrasza last night about this part…” Hesitating again, she cleared her throat and reached for where Sylvanas’s shoulder had once been, swiping with her hand through the smoke. 

Behind her, the Life-Binder moved both of her hands upwards, causing the green lines on the corpse to flare and spread over the black stone of the altar, forming curls and symbols that the banshee didn’t recognise. It looked as if an intricate net had formed on and around the body. 

Alleria was still mulling over her words, clenching her hand into a fist and closing her eyes. When she opened them again, her frown had transformed into a concerned crinkle. “I’m here f-” 

“You will need to step away, Alleria,” Xerestrasza said, laying a hand on the elf’s shoulder. Lirastrasza had stepped forward too. The banshee had forgotten about the Dragon Queen’s daughters’ presence. They both wore very grave looks, and Xerestrasza softly pulled Alleria to the back of the cavern, where she took an uneasy stance in between the both of them. The banshee felt a slight sadness as she watched her sister shuffle on her feet. 

Alexstrasza cleared her throat. “Sylvanas,” she spoke in a heavy voice. The banshee turned around to face her. She knew the name was hers, yet it felt so alien to her. The Life-Binder’s arms were dotted with glowing green veins, as the power of life itself coursed through her body. She was completely in her element, and the banshee thought she couldn’t be further removed from her own. Yet the dragon’s eyes were kind, despite the intensity of her gaze. “I am honoured-” she said, “ - to perform this resurrection, truly. And I do hope you feel the same.” 

Then she placed her hand on the chest of Sylvanas’s body, and the very last thing that the banshee felt was _ honoured. _

Pain consumed her form, flaring through unseen paths in the smoky haze. She felt herself jerk and attempted to escape from the burning pain, but something pulled her in, closer and closer to the altar. Her body lay eerily still as the glowing green lines drew their paths across the expanse of grey skin. Paths that felt like liquid fire searing into her soul when the banshee started being connected to her body anew. Her feet formed from the roiling smoke, as the life-giving powers of the Red Aspect pulled them into her body. It was as if a hundred hooks pierced her form and anchored her into her body once more. 

Sylvanas began to struggle against the pain, feeling the pull of the Life-Binder’s magic in her flesh. It called to her, a call for her to surrender. And while Sylvanas knew it would be the right thing to do, she struggled, attempting to escape Alexstrasza’s powers. They bound her restless soul to her body in a way that made it look as if she was kneeling on the altar. Her upper body was still devoid of anything that could be called life, while the feeling in her legs hadn’t returned either. Then her wrists were seized by threads of green flames, wrapping around her arms and pulling her backwards, where her cold body was awaiting her. 

And how cold it was. It would have taken her breath away, had she possessed it. A choking wave of cold washed over her as she was pulled into her body once again. In her mind’s eye, she saw the Lich King, holding her by the throat as he poured his unholy magic into her. 

Sylvanas screamed. 

~~~

A sharp ache flashed through Alleria’s chest as she watched her wife struggle to finish her ritual. Sylvanas was _ writhing _ on the stone platform, seemingly unaware that she was screaming curses and demanding that Alexstrasza stop what she was doing. Thankfully, her wife did not do so, and Alleria flinched when Sylvanas screamed again.

“Arthas! _ Enough!” _

A pause, and then a whimper. 

“_Please.” _

More soothing, murmured words came from Alexstrasza, but they did nothing to calm Sylvanas. Alleria had to doubt that she even heard them. Moments passed, but they felt like hours as Sylvanas’s yelling died down and turned into pleading, and any hatred that Alleria felt for Arthas, she suddenly felt towards herself as well. 

That was her _ sister. _ Her flesh and blood. She had been there when Sylvanas was born, holding her mother’s hand and comforting her the best she could throughout her labour. She’d fed Sylvanas and bathed her and watched her first steps. She’d helped her learn to read, and had taught her how to shoot a bow when her sister was but four years of age. She’d snuck her extra dessert, and had always pinned the blame on her whenever their mother had caught her. She’d annoyed her for countless nights as she and Lirath worked on flute duets, which caused Sylvanas to go sleepless into the early hours of the morning. She’d cheered and applauded the loudest when Sylvanas was accepted as a ranger in training. She’d hugged her after her first heartbreak, only to have the favor returned but a week later. She’d teased her and bullied her and played with her and done her best to be a big sister, but she knew that it would never be _ quite _enough.

She’d loved her.

She’d loved her, and yet she had been so quick to stop once Vereesa had told her of what had happened. Alleria grimaced, though it quickly faded as Sylvanas’s pleas slowed to a stop. She watched closely as her wife, panting as she did so, drew a few runes in the air with her pointer finger, seeming to put an end to the ritual she’d performed. Sylvanas looked no different, as she was now naught more than Nathanos had been: a well-preserved Forsaken, but there was something that felt different about her. Something that wasn’t because of the ritual, but because of the conversation Alleria had with her wife the night prior. She could see now that Sylvanas was just her little sister, who had gotten herself into trouble, who was hurt or saddened. Finally, after a moment of staying utterly still, Alleria broke free of the dragons’ grasp and rushed to her. They didn’t try to stop her, nor did her wife as she ran to her side and grasped firmly onto Sylvanas’s hand.

Her sister seemed asleep for the moment, but upon feeling Alleria’s warm hands cupping her own, her eyes fluttered open. She blinked before looking up to meet Alleria’s eyes, no small amount of confusion at the soft display in her own, and Alleria found herself mouthing words that didn’t make their way past her lips. But when they finally did, they spilled out, and she was seemingly unable to stop herself. “Sylvanas are… are you okay? How are you feeling? Are you hot? Cold? Can you sit up or walk? Do you need something to eat?”

Sylvanas stared blankly at her for a moment, though it was not the look of annoyance or forced boredom that Alleria had seen whilst confronting her in Lordaeron. Finally, she muttered a single word. “Dizzy.”

“Dizzy,” Alleria repeated, sounding breathless when she did. She cleared her throat, forcing the sadness that filled her chest and throat _ away _as she nodded. “Dizzy. That’s okay. You don’t have to move. You’re probably tired. I can take you back to your room. You can sleep for a while. I really doubt you’ll even have to use Alexstrasza’s spell to fall asleep.” She was rambling, and fiddling with the cold hand in her own, but Alleria couldn’t find the strength to stop until her wife laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her a soft squeeze. That grounded Alleria, and she forced herself to stand upright, dropping Sylvanas’s hand as she did. Something flashed in her sister’s red eyes - disappointment? - when she did. 

“It’s fine,” Sylvanas insisted, suddenly seeming more conscious than she had for the past few seconds. Alleria could practically _ see _the walls being built up once more, but she couldn’t allow it. “I can do it myself.”

“No.” Without waiting for any further objections, the eldest Windrunner sister snaked one hand beneath her younger sister’s knees and the other under her neck, then scooped her up and left the cave.

~~~

_ “Why did you offer this?” _

_ Alleria had insisted on leaving that dinner as soon as possible, and both Jaina and Sylvanas had both agreed quickly and eagerly for reasons she was unaware of. Alexstrasza had obliged, and now they stood with their backs turned to one another in their room, getting ready for bed. _

_ There were many things that Alleria would call her sister, both the alive version of her that she once knew and the corpse of her that was driven around by someone she couldn’t recognize. Stubborn was the first word that came to mind. Annoying. Prideful. A little bitchy. And, in her life, rather selfless. Most of the time, that was, but enough that it was a noticeable trait. She had, after all, happily taken Arator in when he was but a baby, and then had fought to defend Quel’thalas to her dying breath, resulting in enough time to allow many of the high elves, her sister and nephew included, to flee. _

_ That good quality, along with any others that may have accompanied her sister during her life, were now gone. And that wasn’t _ Sylvanas’s _ fault. No, it wasn’t the fault of her sister, the one that had hoarded fluffy pillows and taught Vereesa to use a bow and ate jam straight from the jar with naught more than a spoon or her fingers. That sister had died thirteen years ago in her fight with Arthas, and all that yet remained was still controlled by the Lich King, but pretending to be free. _

_ The idea of bringing her back… of giving her a second chance to live… It sickened Alleria. Her sister died. She was dead. She had died thirteen years ago in one of the bravest ways someone could die, and that legacy would never leave her. And Alleria loved her sister. But she was dead. And if this body that _ looked _ like her was brought back to life… That could only give whatever was left of the Lich King more control. He could manipulate the situation, turn it so this version of Sylvanas gained everyone’s trust once more. She scowled, turning towards her wife, who had just finished dressing into her sleepwear. _

_ “Alleria, I must be frank with you. And this may seem a little rude.” Alexstrasza’s eyes didn’t betray her, as her eyebrows were ever so slightly creased into the smallest of frowns as she glanced down at her wife. Behind the somewhat stern look the Life-Binder held, Alleria could still see all of the love and compassion Alexstrasza held. Had anyone else dared utter those words to her, Alleria may have snapped. But her gut instinctively told her to trust the dragon, as it had many, many times before. Wordlessly, she nodded, giving her wife permission to continue. “I fully understand why you listened to Vereesa above all else. She is the same as she was when you left; all of her love for her family and for the world still brightening the spaces she occupies.” A warm hand reached up to cup Alleria’s cheek, the thumb gently stroking over her cheekbone. “And she returned Arator to you, having nothing but good words to say about the boy you brought into this world.” There was a minute pause before Alexstrasza continued. “I am not saying that Vereesa is a bad person by any means. But could she not only give you her side of the story when the two of you first reunited?” _

_ It was Alleria’s turn to frown a little, but the frown was not born out of anger, simply confusion. “What do you mean?” _

_ “Everyone has a different version of events. That is not a bad thing, as it allows all situations to have nuance that one person cannot achieve on their own. But oftentimes, we forget to consider all sides of the equation; all of the different motivations that everyone involved may have. Turalyon may have had his reasons for, after all that time, choosing the Light over you. That is not to say they were sound reasons, but they were his reasons nonetheless. Does this make sense so far?” _

_ “I’m sure he had his reasons for being an asshole,” Alleria muttered, though she was quick to nod when Alexstrasza raised a single eyebrow. “But yes, this all makes sense. I just fail to see why we should hear Sylvanas’s side of the story.” She almost expected Alexstrasza to cut her off, to object to her concerns, but the dragon was quiet and clearly listening intently to what her wife had to say. Alleria’s chest swelled with a feeling that, not too long ago, she had resigned herself to never feeling again: love. Safety. She took the impossibly soft hand that still rested on her cheek; not to move it away, but simply to keep it still as she turned her head and pressed a kiss to the palm. “My sister, as I knew her, would have never done any of the deeds that Sylvanas has done since her death. She never would have allowed Wrathgate, raised people from the grave, or burnt Teldrassil, nor would she have fought against the Alliance. She used to try to be the bridge between the high elves and the humans, and now she wants nothing more than to slaughter both races.” _

_ Alexstrasza, to her credit, waited until Alleria was clearly done speaking before she even opened her mouth. “Alleria, have you heard of the concept of the Pygmalion Effect?” _

_ Again, Alleria frowned. “No.” _

_ “Consider a scenario in which everyone around you suddenly sees you as unreliable. No one can trust what you do or say.” Alleria’s frown deepened, but she didn’t say a word. “No matter how you try to convince them, their views are set in stone, and they brush you off. They don’t listen when you talk, and always eye you suspiciously whenever you enter a room.” _

_ “And I couldn’t convince them otherwise?” _

_ “Why would they listen? If they have the mindset that you are inherently untrustworthy and unreliable, why would they believe you when you claim that you are not?” Alleria’s eyes flickered downward as her frown only grew, though she was able to find some comfort as Alexstrasza slowly started stroking her thumb back and forth over her cheekbone. “After days become weeks, and weeks become months, you can’t convince them no matter how hard you try. No matter what you say or _ do_, they simply won’t listen. Would you keep trying to convince them?” _

_ “Yes!” Alleria looked back up at Alexstrasza, who simply raised a single eyebrow. “...No. That… that sounds exhausting. At some point, it may just be easier to be who people think I am.” _

_ When Alexstrasza spoke again, her voice was softer. Subdued, almost. “Now imagine being in Sylvanas’s position. She was killed defending Quel’thalas. When she was raised - against her will, mind you - she was forced to fight for the man who killed her. Understandably, many high elves grew to not trust her. But she managed to fight back, to take her body and mind away from the man who had stolen not only her life, but the lives of the vast majority of her people, and then she was able to free the minds of so many others.” She paused. “How many Forsaken have you interacted with, Alleria?” _

_ “Calia, naturally.” The elf paused, thinking for a moment. “I’ve seen Lilian Voss on a few occasions, and have been unfortunate enough to have a word or two with Nathanos. Alonsus Faol and I have also become acquaintances, due to his kindness towards King Wrynn.” _

_ “And the farmers? The merchants? Those who once resided in Lordaeron, practicing their craft, and were killed when the scourge swept through the land?” _

_ “Admittedly, I have had little, if any, contact with them. Jaina and Lor’themar have been handling their move and subsequent residing in Theramore, and I have had nothing to do with that operation.” _

_ “Understandable,” Alexstrasza said, her warm hand taking Alleria’s and giving it a soft squeeze. “You have had your own people to tend to, after all, as well as your assistance with our project here. I think it would be beneficial for you to meet them, my dear.” _

_ ~~~ _

_ Theramore was booming. Alleria had never gotten the chance to visit when it was first founded, as she had been on the other end of the Dark Portal, but she’d heard tales from Vereesa and Jaina. The destruction was still evident, especially since the Forsaken were still in the process of patching up the crater that was in the middle of the city, but most of the buildings seemed habitable, and there were Forsaken, goblin, and gnome engineers and architects running all over the place to instruct workers what to build and how to build it. Were her focus not on Jaina’s tour, Alleria would have marveled at how well the gnomes and the goblins were getting along. _

_ “Most of the residents have been making their homes in those houses over there.” The mage motioned towards a small cluster of buildings, each of which could easily fit at least a dozen people in them. More, if those people had scarce belongings and required little food or rest, as Forsaken often did. She pointed to the left of those buildings, where one of the old towers was almost entirely repaired, save for the very top that still seemed to be mostly rubble. “That’s going to be the university. Baine and Anduin have both pledged some funds from the Horde and the Alliance to offer educations to those who may desire it. They’re still working out exactly what courses of study it will offer, but magic is certainly on the table.” _

_ “Impressive,” Alexstrasza commented, taking a look over the building. “If you all are still in the process of rebuilding by the time my sanctum is complete, I would be delighted to offer some assistance. Surely a dragon or two would be appreciated in lifting some of the heavier materials to higher areas.” _

_ Jaina beamed, tearing her eyes away from the tower. “That’d be great! Gnomes and goblins can only carry so much, and while the Forsaken are stronger, they’re also rather few in number.” When she received a simple nod from Alexstrasza, she continued on. “The old keep has been repurposed into a city council and once the city gets off its feet, we expect that they will be massive in the fish trade. Especially since Forsaken don’t have to worry about drowning.” From where they stood near the center of the city, Jaina was able to tell them about a few other areas, focusing primarily on the docks, the embassy, and the professions market, but it wasn’t long before she was leading the couple towards the housing buildings that she had previously pointed out. Inside the closest one sat a Forsaken woman, and one of the most horrific ones Alleria had seen. Her eyes were dull, lacking that yellow glow that so many other undead had, and there were deep, dark bags under them. Her jaw had all but rotted away, leaving sickly gray flesh that was clearly sewn together by purple, red, and black threads. Despite that, her jawbone was still visible, as were the bones of her arms, spine, and knees. Spurts of greenish-gray hair hung limply from her rotted scalp, leaving quite a few areas visibly bald. _

_ Alleria was quick to avert her eyes from the woman, but not before catching the distrustful and almost downright sinister glare she was sent. Even Jaina looked a little sickened, though she kept a polite smile on her face, and Alexstrasza seemed to be the only unaffected by the state of this former human. “Scary,” she greeted, bowing her head. “A pleasure to see you again.” _

_ “Likewise,” the woman croaked, her voice as gravelly as they came. Despite not sparing a glance to her, Alleria could _ feel _ that dead gaze that bore into her skin. “Chromie still kickin’?” _

_ “Chromie is doing quite well, the last I heard. Shall I send her your greetings?” _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ There was a moment’s pause before Alleria forced herself to look back at this woman - at Scary - and immediately made eye contact with her. Despite her seeming lack of eyes, the way this Forsaken looked at her made Alleria’s skin crawl. She felt judged. _

_ That was not something she was not already used to, naturally. But she was used to receiving judgement from blood elves; those she had left behind to travel through the Dark Portal. Those who viewed her as having abandoned them in their darkest hours, leaving them with a prince who lost his mind, their Ranger-General slain, and in the hands of Lor’themar. Not a Forsaken woman, who seemed to not be too much of a soldier, if her leaner-than-average frame was anything to consider. Still, the presence of her wife beside her allowed Alleria to calm herself slightly, and she maintained her eye contact with Scary. “It’s… good to meet you,” she finally said. “Alexstrasza thought it beneficial for the two of us to speak.” _

_ Scary nodded, scratching absentmindedly at the back of her hand. “Lady Proudmoore said you won’t tell Baine that I’m a loyalist.” _

_ That gave Alleria pause. She’d assumed, naturally, that the Forsaken that had still sided with Sylvanas were killed, either by Sylvanas herself or by the Horde soldiers. But there was one sitting before her, who looked… as alive as she could be. Briefly, she wondered how many more loyalists there were in this city, and if that was why Jaina specifically had requested the task of assisting them in making their new home. She had, after all, known of Sylvanas’s survival before the other two Windrunner sisters had. _

_ Mutely, Alleria nodded, and Scary finally broke their eye contact to give Jaina an apprehensive look. “Alright,” she said after a moment. “What do ya wanna know?” _

_ With Alexstrasza’s assistance, Alleria took a seat in a chair directly across from where Scary sat perched on the back of her own chair. Though her wife’s hand remained on her shoulder, Alleria noticed Jaina leave the building from the corner of her eye, but she didn’t question it. “About your life, I suppose. Or your unlife. About why you’re still loyal to my sister.” _

_ Another nod. “Just before the scourge took over, I lived in Lordaeron. A pretty rural part. The closest city was the capital, but even that was a day’s walk from my house.” She cracked her knuckles, causing Alleria to curl her nose in disgust at the wet sound. “I farmed and worked as a leatherworker. Lived with my brother and his wife. They had a few kids.” She paused for a moment. “Madison and Caitlyn. A dog too. _

_ “I made my way to the capitol after Terenas’s death to sell some shit I’d made. Saddles and clothes and that sorta thing. It was chaos but like… what else was I supposed to do? Starve?” She paused, as though expecting Alleria to answer. “Nah. On my way back, I was mauled by a bunch of those scourge. Pretty viciously, as you can see.” She gestured rather proudly to her body. “Became this. Ran wild for a while, probably killed some people. After about a year or so, Sylvanas freed a bunch of us from the Lich King’s control. I was in one of the first groups she freed. _

_ “Hated it though. Absolutely refused to follow her. Even called her some names, right to her face.” She grinned. “She kinda just shrugged me off, and told me that if I wanted to leave, there was nothin’ stopping me. So I left. Gave her and the rest of the Forsaken a bony middle finger and strutted right out of her army and right back home. _

_ “My brother and his family were packing to leave. They’d heard of Theramore, actually, and how everyone who lived there were also from Lordaeron. I never found out if they made it. If they did, they either died to that bomb or live in Stormwind now. Who knows. But I managed to get home just before they left. Saw little Maddie and Catie in the farm, getting whatever crops were left to bring with them. Didn’t see that dog anywhere. But I was so happy to see them that I ran right up. Totally forgot that I look like this. Can ya guess what happened?” _

_ “They were frightened,” Alleria said, her voice now soft as she was entranced in the story. _

_ “Damn right. They screamed and ran right inside, yelling for their mommy and daddy. I thought it was a game at first, ya know? I used to chase ‘em around all the time, and they’d hide behind my brother and his wife. So I chased after ‘em and barged inside. _

_ “Nearly took a bullet to the brain for that. Not my smartest moment. Dunno if it would kill me, but I sure as hell don’t wanna find out. My brother had heard the screaming and had grabbed his gun, sheltering his wife and kids. He almost puked when he saw me. Guess I look the same as I did when I was alive.” That prompted a slight laugh from Scary, though it was clearly forced, an attempt to lighten the mood. “Anyway. His wife was pregnant. Pretty far along. She’d been meal prepping for the journey, but was now hiding her crying kids - my nieces - from me. They kept lookin’ back at me though, and screaming names. I tried to explain that I was me, their aunt, but they didn’t listen. Kept screaming ‘ugly’ and ‘monster’ and, their personal favorite, ‘scary’. Their daddy reloaded his gun and I had no choice but to leave. _

_ “Your sister was smug about it, ya know. She didn’t turn me away, though. Let me right back into her ranks. Gave me some knives and told me to work on my stealth. Gave me my own little place in the Undercity once we took it over. I had a little leatherworking store and eventually became a rogue.” _

_ This time, the silence that hung over the room lasted for a solid minute as Alleria processed what Scary had said to her. She stared in open awe at the woman, no longer even noticing the rotten features that decorated her. “It sounds terrible,” she said after a long while, “but I think I needed to hear that. To see you as human.” _

_ “‘m not human, though. I’m Forsaken. See, I wanted to be in the Alliance again. All of us did, your sister especially. She kept sending diplomats and scouts, but they never returned. Hell, I was even hunted down by some humans once or twice while I was out getting leather. It didn’t take long before the message came through loud and clear: we were unwanted. And even when we joined the Horde, that merry band of misfits, we were still seen as disgusting. An alliance of convenience, just so they could have some eyes on the Eastern Kingdoms. They didn’t care about us as people.” The way she spoke was almost casual, and it struck Alleria after a moment that Scary was _ used _ to this kind of treatment. She’d likely spent the past decade under the careful scrutiny of the rest of the Horde, who were supposed to be her allies. She couldn’t imagine not trusting any races within the Alliance. _

_ Distrust was still present in Alleria, but it was naught more than an instinctual reaction, one that she’d had for far too long. Alexstrasza seemed fully at ease beside her, though, and Jaina had accepted her into Theramore… Alleria slowly nodded. “What’s your name, then?” _

_ “Scary.” _

_ “No, your name.” _

_ “Scary _ is _ my name.” Scary stood, rather abruptly, and hopped off of her chair with surprising grace. With that, she left the building, leaving Alleria alone with her wife. _

_ Another pause sounded through the room, and were they not so long and awkward, Alleria would have become used to them. Alexstrasza moved to take Scary’s seat, though she scooted it closer to her wife so she could take Alleria’s hands in her own. As the eldest Windrunner looked up to her, she had to stifle a soft laugh. Alexstrasza was quite large, even when she wasn’t in her dragon form, and she made the average sized chair look like one made for children beneath her. “As I said, I don’t believe that Vereesa was wrong. In her version of events, she had heard that Sylvanas served the Lich King, then joined the very Horde that you all once fought against. When the two of them attempted to reconcile at Garrosh’s trial, Vereesa was understandably apprehensive, and decided against the route of poisoning and killing Garrosh.” She paused, sighing. “That does not mean that Sylvanas’s version of events is wrong, though. Please, Alleria, try to consider where she is coming from. She attempted to defend her homeland, only to die doing so. She and her rangers were forced to serve the Lich King. None of her former allies, regardless of faction, trusted her, even after she saved many former members of the scourge from the Lich King’s grasp. Not everything she has done has been morally right, necessarily, but try to consider her perspective. Everyone she once loved turned her away, her own sisters included, and she was never trusted. At a certain point…” _

_ “...you stop trying,” Alleria finished, her eyes wide. “You become the person everyone thinks you are. There’s no point in trying to convince them.” _

_“__Exactly.” With that, Alexstrasza stood, opening her arms wide. Alleria was too quick to stand as well, practically collapsing into her wife’s arms as she sobbed, mourning what her sister’s life had become over the past thirteen years, as well as what her own life _would _have been, had the Void continued to twist her, had someone not broken the Pygmalion Effect and seen the good in her. _


	8. Chapter 8

_ “I love treason but hate a traitor.” - Julius Caesar _

“I want to finish it.” 

Sylvanas looked weak. She’d hardly moved in the past few days, though Alleria wasn’t entirely sure if that was due to the pain that she had endured because of the ritual, or her sister’s own stubbornness. While they may have been getting along better, she remembered all too well how stubborn Sylvanas was while alive. That seemed to have only amplified since her death. 

“You’re well aware of what that kind of strain would do to you. This is a _ life-binding _ ritual, not one for tearing you apart limb from limb.” 

Not long ago, Alleria would have been more than delighted to see that. She had a lot of enemies in her life, especially those who followed the Light’s teachings over all else, but the person she had viewed as her _ former _ sister may have been the most menacing of all. Not only did she serve and lead the Horde - those that, as far as Alleria was concerned, were responsible for the senseless slaughter of their baby brother - but she was also a twisted shell of who she had once been, with all good traits having been stolen away upon her death.

Her wife had been patient and kind enough with her, but that didn’t mean that Alleria _ wasn’t _ still cautious, as she tended to be about most things. No, she was still wary, and still eyed her middle sister with a slight suspicion. If Sylvanas had noticed the bare traces of hesitance to trust her, she hadn’t said a word, and seemed… relieved, if not also cautious, that her elder sister had once again put _ some _faith in her. 

And so, with this semblance of trust between the two, Alleria wouldn’t allow her sister to go through with the second part of the life-binding ritual quite yet. Sylvanas was weaker than she’d seen her in a long time, and couldn’t do so much as walk to the tub without someone to assist her. And that was _ after _a few days. At first, she hadn’t been able to sit up, much to her clear chagrin. While she was making noticeable improvements, it wasn’t yet enough for her to finish the ritual and fully come back to life. Her body simply would not be able to handle such a feat, and she would die, albeit quickly and less painfully than her first death seemed.

Sylvanas’s only form of response was a heaved sigh, followed by a roll of her eyes, and Alleria had to stop her own from doing the same. She instead settled on raising a wispy eyebrow, looking down at her sister. “I know that your patience is running thin and you want to get it over with. But that’s way too dangerous for you right now. Even Alexstrasza has to take a few more days off before she’s ready to continue.”

That seemed to get through to Sylvanas. The few times Alleria had seen her after her death, she’d seemed aloof and uncaring for those around her. Either she wasn’t, which Alleria also wasn’t entirely convinced of, or Alexstrasza’s unconditional kindness and care had managed to break down her hatred for others enough for her to give even the smallest of shits about her. She could certainly understand that, having been in the care of the Dragon Queen herself. “Fine,” Sylvanas grated, allowing her sister to help her sit up fully, so she could rebandage the wound on her back. “But I’m still going to complain about it.”

“You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” Alleria carefully began unwrapping the bandage that Alexstrasza had applied after the ritual. While her eyes were immediately drawn to the jagged scar that marked Sylvanas’s flesh, she focused more on how _ bony _her sister was. It had never been that way in life. She’d always loved to eat, especially baked items that held no real nutritional value. Her excess of physical activity, Alleria had always maintained, was the only thing that had kept her sister from growing chubby. “Gods, you need to eat more.” 

Sylvanas sighed. Eating was a thing she was still deprived of, Alleria knew, and yet the casual banter had slipped out of her so easily. “I can’t. If only your dragon would be able to resurrect me sooner - _ Ow! _” 

“Sorry, it’s still a bit raw. Well, at least it doesn’t look so nasty anymore, since your spine isn’t showing.” Alleria started to apply a bit of salve around the edges of the wound. As she was behind her sister, she didn’t see the smile tug onto Sylvanas’s lips. The casual apology from her older sister was making her more sentimental than it should, she thought. She shivered lightly when Alleria pressed a bit too deeply into the wound, which made the eldest Windrunner softly squeeze her shoulder a few times. 

“Vereesa and Jaina might visit today, if they can both find an excuse to slip away,” she said. That put a damper on Sylvanas’s mood quite quickly. She wasn’t excited in the slightest to see her younger sister, and while she and Jaina got along… decently, all things considered, their last one on one conversation had left a sort of gap between them that, while she was so physically weak, Sylvanas wasn’t terribly keen to think about or discuss with the human. “Lady Proudmoore mentioned that there’s something she wanted to talk to you about.”

“What a joy,” Sylvanas said dryly, resisting the urge to wince as Alleria finished tugging on the new bandages. “Do you think she ever _ stops _talking?”

“Do you?” Alleria sat back a little to survey her work and, seemingly satisfied with it, took the unused bandages that laid beside her and set them in the bathroom cabinets. She made her way back to the bed where Sylvanas still sat, though the younger of the Windrunners had rested back against her pillows. “Just hear her out. She said it’s important.”

“Fine,” Sylvanas murmured, fiddling with her shirt before she pulled it back on. “But I can’t promise I won’t poke fun at anything she has to say.”

“It would be a death wish to request you did.”

~~~

“You two seemed a little… tense, after dinner a few nights ago,” Vereesa murmured, her ears visibly lowered as she welcomed Jaina into the sanctum. Glad she had turned, as to allow one of Alexstrasza’s children to take her overcoat, Jaina pursed her lips. She’d hoped that no one would notice how little she and Sylvanas had spoken after their conversation in the gardens, and if people had, then they wouldn’t mention it. But Vereesa could read her like a book, and they had little, if anything, to hide from one another. They’d been through far too much together, after all.

As she turned back towards the elf, Jaina pulled her lips into a tight, forced smile. She knew it didn’t look good, but it wasn’t there to try to assure the youngest Windrunner sister that she was doing alright. Vereesa knew better. She linked their arms, letting the other woman lead her to Sylvanas’s residence. “We were. After Alexstrasza’s offer, she was very hesitant. We got into a bit of a spat over whether or not she should accept the proposition and return to life.” Though she carried herself with the same pride and confidence that she always did, her head held high with her steps strong, Jaina kept her voice lowered. Her face, when examined closely, exposed her anxieties, which was one of the reasons she never could lie well. It was all too easy to read her. “I didn’t - and still don’t - understand her hesitation. It’s such an incredible and selfless offer, and yet she can’t seem to accept help without at least a little drama.” She sighed. “And I get it. I’m a very proud person myself. But that sort of offer from someone who is so caring and well-known for her love for life and for other beings… That’s not something you turn down.” 

The walk to Sylvanas’s room had been short, but Vereesa had pulled her aside slightly so the two of them could speak before entering. “I could tell she wasn’t sure,” she admitted, unlinking their arms so she could hold one of Jaina’s hands in her own. “And I think you’re right. From everything I’ve seen and been told, she’s been so untrusting since she was raised. Not that she was ever particularly unguarded in life, but it seems like it’s really only intensified in death.” There was a pause, but Jaina didn’t say anything. She could see in Vereesa’s eyes that there was something she wanted to say, and she gave the elf’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “That said… She and Alleria have been far closer since the first part of her ritual. I was with my boys, so I wasn’t able to be there, but I think something happened. Something to warm each of them up to the other.”

Jaina frowned a bit, her eyes flickering down as she thought. “I haven’t seen Sylvanas since the aforementioned supper, but I was visited by Alleria and Alexstrasza later that night, in Theramore. Alex had requested to meet one of the Forsaken refugees, particularly one who is still loyal to Sylvanas, even after her betrayal.” She looked back to Vereesa, who had joined her in frowning. “I had other matters to attend to, so I’m not entirely sure what they spoke about, but it seemed so serious.” She sighed, noting how Vereesa’s lips were pursed. “Are you okay?”

Vereesa quickly smiled, though it was very clearly tense and forced, and she nodded. “Yeah! Totally fine! Not in the least bit jealous.” 

“And that wasn’t in the least bit convincing,” Jaina teased, giving Vereesa’s hands another squeeze. “I know that you and Alleria are close, but I sincerely doubt that her spending time with Sylvanas will mean that she would want to spend any less time with you. The two of you have been through so much together, and-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Vereesa said, cutting off Jaina’s line of thought. The mage had to take a moment to think, unsure of what in the world Vereesa could mean, before it dawned on her. 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause, and both of the women watched the rather uneventful floor for a few seconds before Vereesa spoke again, guilt coating every word. “We were so close when we were little. And the years following Alleria’s disappearance, when it was just the two of us… We were closer than ever. Even though she had her position, and I had Rhonin, we made as much time as possible to spend with one another. We discussed how to raise Arator, how Rhonin and I were doing, how her own love life was. We were so open with one another before she-” Vereesa’s voice choked up, and it took everything in Jaina to not pull her into a tight hug. “-before she died. And then when Garrosh’s trial came around… I was so alone. You know that. And it’s not like you weren’t there for me.”

“I had my… own issues,” Jaina admitted, feeling a bit guilty herself. While Vereesa had been angry, she had also been mostly sad. It had taken so much out of her to even get out of bed in the morning, let alone take care of her sons, check in on Arator, and continue her duties within the Silver Covenant. And while Jaina had been incredibly depressed, as she had lost the home she had built for herself, she had turned primarily to anger. Anger at Garrosh and anger at the rest of the Horde, _ Thrall _ in particular, for letting him lead and allowing him to commit such heinous deeds. Anger at the blood elves that resided in Dalaran. Anger at Kalec for daring to think that she could be okay. Anger at Orgrimmar itself, that had manifested in more power than she’d used in her life. While she’d drawn comfort from Vereesa, she hadn’t been around as much as she could have been, and had used the other woman’s anguish as yet another reason to lash out against the Horde. “I know the two of you were getting closer during the trial. And I can’t say that I wasn’t slightly jealous or upset with you for becoming so close with a member of the Horde.”

“An understandable concern,” Vereesa assured, stroking her thumb over Jaina’s hand. The mage’s free one, the one that didn’t cling tightly to the soft hands of her closest friend, moved up to quickly wipe away tears that were forming. “I’m just glad that you understand. I was alone. Within less than fifty years, _ all _ of my blood family, save for my children and Arator, had been slaughtered or had gone missing. My husband was slain. And seeing Sylvanas like… like _ that _ was another punch in the gut. But she and I shared a common goal, one that I’m sure you longed for as well.”

“To kill Garrosh,” Jaina murmured. She’d known the vague details of why Vereesa and Sylvanas had reunited three years prior, but had not been let in on what those meetings had entailed. Only that they had occurred, and the sisters had, according to Anduin, planned to kill Garrosh by poisoning his food. A solid plan, had they gone through with it, and one that likely would have never resulted in them being caught. 

“Yes. No trial and no mercy for a man who showed absolutely none to my family and her people. While that was what brought us together, we were able to bond again. Just like old times. Just like sisters. She was so standoffish at first, and had that same haughty attitude that she has today. But when I broke down over Rhonin’s death…” Vereesa sighed. “She was so quick to comfort me. She hugged me and reassured me and talked to me… She let me cry without judgement and without telling me to get my act together, as I am a leader and a mother, and I need to be strong for my people and children. We spoke openly and candidly about not only that, but what we had gone through after Arthas’s siege of Quel’thalas. We spoke of our childhoods and of our futures. We even planned for me to live in the Undercity with her. Whenever I wasn’t with her, I wanted to be.” 

There was a pause, where Vereesa seemed to try to gather her thoughts and pull herself together the slightest bit before she started to speak again. “And then I ruined it. It was all over. I don’t think I was in the wrong for considering the futures of my boys, but… I only sent her a letter. I should have spoken to her in person… I owed her that much. And I’m so glad that she and Alleria are getting along. I am so, _ so _glad. Alexstrasza really has done wonders for- well, for the both of them, I suppose. But for Alleria especially. She’s so much happier now. Open. And I’m glad. I’m happy for them, I really am.” She looked back to Jaina, her eyes almost pleading with the mage to believe her. “I just wish that I could be a part of that. That I could help Sylvanas heal. That I could have my sister back.” 

“I understand that,” Jaina said, her voice low as to be as comforting as possible for her friend. “Being able to reunite with Derek and help him to the best of my ability…” She hesitated. “I’m still greatly upset with Sylvanas for bringing him back, and we have yet to speak too deeply about the matter, but I had missed him dearly. Save for Tandred, as he was too young to fully understand, all of us struggled to cope with Derek’s death. My father would spend hours aside his grave, which my mother and I could hardly bear to visit. As such, she had to take over many of the duties that came with being Lord Admiral…” Her lips pulled into a tight smile. “Which, given the rambunctious and often drunken nature of Kul Tirans, can be quite a handful at times.” 

She huffed a soft laugh, then forced herself to focus on the present again. “He and I had always been close, despite the sizable age gap between us. He’d always read to me and took me sailing. He’d comforted me through storms and had told me so many tales of his and Father’s adventures across the seas. I had only gotten to spend nine years with him by the time he passed, but I was shattered. I can’t imagine losing someone after hundreds of years.” She paused. “Nor can I imagine giving up on someone who you’ve trusted for hundreds of years because of one singular lapse in judgement. I… _ truly _never thought I would say anything of the sort, but as cautious and guarded as Sylvanas is, I think that she would let you in if you put in some effort. Perhaps that’s why she and Alleria are getting along better.” 

Vereesa blinked, hesitating for a second as she took her friend’s words in. “I truthfully hadn’t thought about it that way. I don’t really know why I thought they started to be closer, but that hadn’t crossed my mind,” she admitted. She sounded more hopeful, suddenly, and Jaina couldn’t help the slight smile that tugged at her lips. “Okay. I can give this my best effort.” Dropping Jaina’s hand, she opened her arms for a hug, which the mage gladly gave her. “Thank you.”

Jaina pressed a kiss to her cheek before taking a step back, offering her hand to be held once again. “Of course.” As soon as Vereesa had once again taken her hand, Jaina gave it a soft squeeze, and the two of them made the few steps to Sylvanas’s room.

Neither bothered to knock, instead just stepping inside without any warning. The first thing Jaina noticed was how weak Sylvanas looked. That came much to her surprise, as it had been a few days since the first part of the ritual, and she had assumed that Sylvanas would be stubborn enough to, at the very least, be walking around and getting used to her life without her banshee powers. But instead she was still in bed, with the fluffy white pillows from her bedroom in Windrunner Spire helping prop her up so she could sit upright. Her eyes flickered over to Jaina and Vereesa as they entered, and it seemed as though she immediately caught sight of their held hands. A look flickered across her face, one that Jaina couldn’t quite identify, before she steeled herself once more. 

The second thing she noticed was Alleria, who sat aside Sylvanas on the edge of her bed. While Sylvanas herself had offered no sort of greetings or acknowledgement, positive or negative, Alleria was all too quick to smile and give them both a slight nod of her head. “Vereesa. Jaina. I trust the trip here went smoothly?”

“As smooth as a portal can be,” Jaina replied, smiling the slightest bit in return. “Anduin sends his regards.” At the raised eyebrow from the eldest Windrunner, she continued. “I simply told him I was visiting you and Alexstrasza for tea, nothing more. He seems so relieved that I’ve been taking so many breaks and making so many visits to the two of you. I almost feel bad for working more than I’ve let on.”

“Well, if the working involves committing treason, that’s understandable.” Jaina blinked in surprise, feeling Vereesa tense the slightest bit beside her when Sylvanas spoke. Her voice sounded… normal, in an odd way. It no longer carried that slightly ethereal echo that accompanied her banshee form, and instead sounded like that of any other high elf. She was still undead, naturally, but it seemed that Sylvanas didn’t care to have the often gravely voice that many other Forsaken did. The smooth nature of her voice was enough to make Jaina hesitate for a second, genuinely surprised that she did not only sound so normal, but that she _ had _spoken. 

“Right, yes, I suppose that’s fair,” she said after a moment, meeting Sylvanas’s eyes. They were still red, an unsurprising fact, but they didn’t burn as greatly as before. It didn’t seem to be because of her mood, as she seemed quite content, albeit tired. Perhaps, she considered, this would simply be the color of her eyes until she was once again alive, and then they would turn… whatever their normal color was. Blue? 

Not important. “How are you, Sylvanas?”

“Exhausted,” the elf grumbled. “Surprisingly so. I’m not yet mortal, and still, it’s hard to do so much as walk to the bath. At least the dragons no longer expect me to build.”

“They will once more, the moment you’re able to.” Alleria’s voice sounded different as well, but not in the same way that Sylvanas’s did. While Jaina was so used to her sounding tired or frustrated or outright angry, she now almost carried a lighter note, as though teasing her sister for her unwillingness to assist the dragonflight. With the slightest of frowns, Jaina stole a glance to Vereesa, and found that her friend was wide-eyed as she watched her two older sisters interact. Perhaps her analysis was correct, then.

“Yes, yes, and I’ll try to find it in my schedule to help them.” While the wave of her hand was dismissive, Sylvanas shot her elder sister a playful smirk. It faltered after a second, but was still noticeable. 

Vereesa’s grip on her hand tightened.

“Right,” Jaina said, trying to interrupt the conversation that Sylvanas and Alleria seemed to be in the middle of. As glad as she was that they were getting along _ far _better, Vereesa’s grip was starting to hurt and her discomfort was practically radiating off of her. The mage had to wonder if Sylvanas was doing this on purpose. She was likely able to read Vereesa fairly well, after all. “I didn’t come just to check in on you, though. I wanted to continue a conversation that Alexstrasza started a while ago.” She was given only a raise of an eyebrow in response. “We should discuss your long-term plans. If you wish to make it known that you did not die during the coup.”

There was a brief silence, and Jaina studied the look on Sylvanas’s face as she refused to break eye contact. It was utterly unamused, with only the slightest raise of an eyebrow, but she was clearly considering Jaina’s words. “And _ why, _” Sylvanas finally said, also refusing to back down, “would I do that?”

“I’m not talking about announcing to the entire world that you’re alive. I do value my own life, after all.” Only to a certain extent, and certainly not on a daily basis, but that was beside the point. “I was thinking that we could start with Lor’themar. He and I have been working closely as of late, and we more or less trust one another. He also knew you in life, did he not?” She didn’t wait for an answer, nor did Sylvanas attempt to give her one. “If he were to know that you’re being returned to life, he would be the one most likely to agree with the idea. He could help us bridge the gap between you and the Horde in the future.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” Sylvanas huffed a sigh, her blank look beginning to grow bored. It was an act, Jaina knew, but one that had always irked her. It did Sylvanas no good to put distance between herself and the only people in the world who knew of her survival.

Surprisingly, Alleria spoke up before Jaina could open her mouth again, and even the sound of her eldest sister’s voice made Vereesa’s grip tighten once again. “Your existence can only remain secret for so long. Adventurers are nosy, and I’m willing to bet that it wouldn’t be even a year from now before someone stumbles upon you while running errands for the dragonflight. Or maybe you’ll piss off one of Alexstrasza’s children, and they’ll tell someone. Perhaps another dragonflight will reside here, and mistake your room for one of their own.” The reasons seemed to come easily to Alleria, much to Jaina’s admitted amusement. “Maybe you’ll get pissy about something and want to leave, only to run into someone outside.”

Sylvanas’s annoyance showed clearly on her face, and she shot a glare to her older sister. “I get the point,” she practically hissed, and Jaina had to wonder if the two really were as friendly as Vereesa feared. While a single glance at them may make it appear that way, there was still animosity. Animosity that likely wouldn’t fully dissipate until they actually confronted and spoke about their rocky past. 

Jaina’s fears were confirmed. Alleria had clearly taken notice of the glare, and her own eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you sure you don’t want me to continue?” Her tone was friendlier than usual, but in a saccharine way. She was testing Sylvanas, Jaina realized, watching as the two stared at one another with their ears lowered. Seeing how much Sylvanas could take before she snapped, or if she would give in and accept the teasing as most sisters would. And if she didn’t… how exactly she would go about it.

“I would _ love _to hear your little theories, sister.” Sylvanas seemed determined not to allow Alleria to get the higher ground, but Jaina was determined not to let this spat continue. Without dropping Vereesa’s hand, she took a step forward, doing so rather loudly as to gather the attention of both of the sisters. 

“Please,” she said, not realizing until a moment later how utterly exhausted she sounded. Alleria and Sylvanas abandoned their eye contact at the same time to look to the mage, who glanced between the two of them. “Both of you. You only just started to get along again; don’t jeopardize this.” To her left, she could see Vereesa nod in agreement, though the youngest of the sisters stayed quiet. 

Slowly, both pairs of eyes left her, and Jaina watched as they glanced at one another again. She noted, however, that Sylvanas’s eyes briefly seemed to flicker down to where she and Vereesa held hands before she bothered looking back at Alleria. They met eyes again, neither talking for a few seconds that seemed to stretch for far longer than that, before Sylvanas _ finally _opened her mouth. 

“I don’t _ want _ to jeopardize anything,” she grated, her eyes narrowing the slightest bit. It seemed hard for her to admit that and, internally, Jaina had to admire the words that seemed to wrench themselves out of her mouth. Sylvanas’s fangs showed as she pulled her lips back into an eerie smile.

“Then why do you try so hard to?” Alleria bit back. Her ears folded into her neck and Jaina could see that she was rapidly starting to lose control of her temper. “What are you, jealous?”

“Why, dear sister, would I be jealous?” Sylvanas hissed. She narrowed her eyes and her voice twisted with mock surprise. Though she couldn’t get up without straining herself, she sat upright and met Alleria’s furious gaze with defiance. One of her hands was balled up in the blanket, squeezing so tightly that Jaina could see the tendons on her knuckles outlined under her skin. “Perhaps because _ you _ have everything here? You have a home, you have comfort, you have _ love_. Jaina has family, a fleet, people who listen to her and revere her. Vereesa has those two nuisances of hers. And she seemed practically ready to jump into Jaina’s lap when entering this chamber!” 

Choosing to ignore the sputtering noises that came from Vereesa, whose face flushed bright red, Alleria inched closer to the bed. She leaned over Sylvanas and bared her own fangs when she growled, low in her throat. “There are people out there who still want my head, Sylvanas. Those who don’t believe that I have silenced the Void in myself.”

“And then you can always run into the warm arms of your dragon, who will soothe your worries away. You can see your son again; you are free to go wherever you want. And me? I’m stuck here, in this fancy prison.” Sylvanas turned to all in the room when spitting out those last words, daring every one of them to respond.

To her surprise, Jaina did so first. She stepped forward and gestured to the room around her. “This isn’t a prison, Sylvanas!” 

For some reason, it hurt Sylvanas to see the dark frown on Jaina’s face. She hadn’t wanted to piss off the mage. No, she had only wanted to poke up Alleria a bit, but then Alleria hadn’t taken the bait, and Jaina had stepped in instead. Sylvanas lowered her voice a bit. If she had blood streaming through her veins, she would have blushed. “It is not?” she quietly said, more sadness than anger in her voice. “I will be killed when I set but one foot outside this temple.” 

“Stop acting like a child, Sylvanas,” Alleria hissed, and Sylvanas felt her anger spike anew. Thin wisps of void were starting to frame the edges of her face. “Alexstrasza has ensured your safety here, and you haven’t exactly done many things that would make you worthy of it.” After Sylvanas could only manage a shocked gasp at those words, because she hadn’t expected Alleria to voice them, the eldest Windrunner sister started pacing around in the room. Vereesa stepped in to try and lay a hand on her arm, but Alleria sharply turned away. With a grin that Jaina could only describe as slightly deranged, she looked at Sylvanas. “You want something else than this? Well, do you?”

If Sylvanas was at all impressed, she didn’t let it show on her face. The only thing she did was give Alleria a practiced, leveled stare. “Can you give me anything noteworthy, sister?”

_ “I can,” _Alleria growled. Her voice was more breath than tone as the Void trickled onto her face, covering her skin in an eerie mask, until only the bright blue of her eyes shone through. “We shall see just what the throne room of Stormwind will give you.” 

~~~

After Alleria had stepped through her portal, Jaina left in a panic, and Vereesa had awkwardly excused herself in the room, but neither of those things were enough to garner so much as a slight reaction out of Sylvanas. 

Alleria had to come back. She would. She would come back soon, apologise for storming off and then all would be fine. Jaina had left so quickly after her that _ surely _she had caught her and they would both be back soon. Alleria had surely just gone to cool her head in the snow outside. Soon she would be longing for the warm embrace of her wife and she’d come slinking back into the Ruby Sanctum. Nothing to worry about. Her rambling about Stormwind was an empty threat, because even Alleria wasn’t so stupid that she’d risk her life and sanity to get a one up on her sister. 

And so Sylvanas closed her eyes and leaned back into the pillows. She was gaining strength again, but frequently, her body still felt like a stack of wet towels. Wishing that she could let go of a deep sigh, she groaned softly in the back of her throat. How long would it be until she could finally feel fully alive again? 

Hurried footsteps sounded in the hallway. There was Alleria, for certain. Sylvanas already drew one eyebrow up in a mildly amused, yet still bored way, when the door flew open to reveal a winded Aurastrasza. 

“You have guests,” she panted, grasping the doorframe and wiping the sweat from her brow. “It’s urgent. Please, get to the portal grounds quickly.” 

Quickly was a relative term, with Sylvanas’s current predicament. She put on her leather breeches and fumbled with the buttons of her doublet for a few moments. There was no time to change into one of the thick cotton shirts, her nightshirt had to do. After hastily putting on socks, she squeezed her feet into her leather indoor shoes and walked as quickly as she could through the corridors. All the while, she wondered what could be so very urgent that she had to force her weakened body to its limits. 

When she opened the grand double doors of Alexstrasza’s residence, she was struck by the chaos that was displayed on the field in front of the portal to Wyrmrest Temple. Several of Alexstrasza’s children were in their true forms, with smoking nostrils and their wings restlessly flapping up and down. Torastrasza was still in human form, her heavy spear in a fighting stance, laying on top of her large shield, ready to attack. She was guarding the five young dragons, who were curled up around her feet, shivering and cowering. Sylvanas scanned the rest of the area. Neither her sister nor Alexstrasza were anywhere in sight. Yet she could not take another step off the veined marble terrace before a furious voice called to her attention.

_ “You! Banshee!” _

Sylvanas could barely believe her ears, which instantly wilted and pressed into her neck. In front of the shimmering portal, her eyebrows furrowed and her lips pulled back in an enraged snarl, stood Tyrande Whisperwind. She had flecks of melting snow on her shoulders and in her green hair. She was flanked by a huge warrior who Sylvanas recognized as Maiev Shadowsong. A few sentinels were also present.

_ How does she know? _ Sylvanas thought as cold fear squeezed deep within her chest. _ Alleria isn’t with her, so how does she know I survived? How does she know I’m here? _Panic seized her and before she had the chance to react, the furious night elven leader conjured up a large bolt in her right hand. Its glow was nearly too bright for Sylvanas to look into, a stark contrast to Tyrande’s inky black eyes. Sylvanas had faced the powers of Elune before, but not this kind of enormous power. 

“I swore to kill you when next we met!” Tyrande snarled, before hurling the charged spell at the undead. 

Stumbling back inelegantly, Sylvanas saw it near her rapidly. She slipped and fell painfully onto the marble below her feet, drawing up an arm in a useless attempt to protect her face. _ I’m going to die_, she realised. _ I’m going to die now, permanently. _Her own whimper rang in her ears, so loudly that she didn’t hear the heavy footsteps next to her, nor did she feel the air spark to life with an energy different than the spell Tyrande had used. 

_ “Enough!!” _Alexstrasza roared. A wall of green magic erupted from the ground, shattering the moonlight spell into a shower of blueish sparks. 

The Dragon Queen was panting harshly. Her shoulders heaved with heavy breaths as she slowly let down her shield. Her hair was swept in all directions, her eyes glowed a deep red and her expression was positively murderous. Sylvanas had never seen her quite so furious and it frightened her deeply, making her musings over where the Life-Binder had come from very brief. She was keenly aware of the fact that Alexstrasza had jumped in front of her to protect her, to prevent her from getting turned into red paste on the terrace. 

“What in the name of the Titans has possessed you, Lady Whisperwind?” she growled, fangs bared as she marched up to the night elf. “You know the laws of this sanctum. This is a place of peace, where violence is strictly forbidden. And _ you _ were attacking my guest.” 

Within seconds, they stood chest to chest. While Alexstrasza had a broader body, Tyrande was as tall as she was. Only the tips of the Life-Binder’s horns ensured that she stood an inch taller than the High Priestess. Sylvanas saw the tension dissipate from the dragon’s shoulders, though she was no doubt ready to act again if Tyrande would lash out anew. Completely the opposite image, Tyrande was shaking in anger. She pulled her warglaive from its position on her back and assumed a fighting stance. 

“I want vengeance for my people, Life-Binder. Give the banshee to me.” 

“There is no banshee here,” Alexstrasza replied. “Only an undead whom I offered help.” When the furious Night Warrior channeled some arcane into the engravings on her weapon, ready to attack, the Dragon Queen snarled deeply. “Do not fight me. It’s not a battle you will win.” 

From where Sylvanas was still lying dazedly on the terrace, supporting herself on one elbow and marvelling at the fact that the Life-Binder had saved her, she saw Tyrande’s hand clench tighter around her warglaive. With her newfound Night Warrior powers, she might actually have stood a chance against the Red Aspect. Such a titanic fight would leave no building standing in the Ruby Sanctum. If Sylvanas had possessed a heartbeat, it would have pounded rapidly in her chest. Instead, she only felt shivers over her entire body when she slowly got to her feet. 

She looked at the shaking forms of the five little dragons, hiding behind Torastrasza’s shield. Then Sylvanas felt a stab of pity in her heart. She could not endanger them, not after all Alexstrasza had done for her. Slowly, she stepped forward, taking a big stride over where the impact of the night elf’s spell against Alexstrasza’s shield had left a black scorch mark on the terrace. “What do you want from me, Whisperwind?” she asked hesitantly. 

“I want you to pay for what you have done to my people,” Tyrande snarled, swiping her moonglaive in Sylvanas’s direction. Instantly, Alexstrasza’s left hand crackled with green energy, undoubtedly ready to stop the weapon if anything would happen. “Fight me, banshee. Face me in battle as you refused to do the night you destroyed my home. Stop hiding here.” 

Sylvanas felt an edge of sickness creep up in her body. She was acutely aware of the state her body was still in. Weakened from the ritual and no longer empowered with her banshee abilities. She was no match all for the Night Warrior and, instinctively, she knew that Tyrande could very well grab her by the throat and snap her spine with her bare hand. No, she had to figure out another way to stay out of the night elf’s clutches. 

And yet, she could barely remember a moment in her living and undeath lives that she had been so afraid. She felt as if she was a cornered animal, trapped between enemies from both sides. Shadowsong, who stood steady behind her and Tyrande, whose darkened eyes stared her down and seemed to stare into her soul. Sylvanas didn’t bother to attempt to hide the irregular twitches in her face or the fact that her ears were pressed flat against her skull. She didn’t try to correct her slumped posture, knowing how gaunt her form was now that she wasn’t wearing her signature armour. For she had sworn to lay down her weapons forever. Instead, she took one step to the side, in Alexstrasza’s direction. 

“I need a warm cloak, boots suitable for the snow outside, a coat, and a dagger.” Her voice shook when she spoke. As she looked into the Life-Binder’s eyes, she saw remnants of the fury she had displayed earlier. But they softened quickly. 

“If you do this, Sylvanas, you know that by breaking your oath to me, I cannot grant you protection anymore,” she said, grasping Sylvanas’s hand in between hers and squeezing softly. 

Sadly, Sylvanas nodded. “And I can no longer endanger your flight with my presence.” With a gesture to the young dragons, who were still crowding together in a little heap, she let go of the Dragon Queen’s hands and stepped away to a respectful distance. “The clothing, please.” 

Alexstrasza closed her eyes for a moment, before slowly nodding. “Retrieve vambraces and a padded vest for under her tunic too. Sylvanas, I won’t allow you to freeze to death before you have set foot outside the temple.” She sent two members of the flight to fetch what Sylvanas had asked for, then cast a look to Tyrande and her group of elves. The High Priestess returned the glare in kind, snarling at them. “I will await you,” she growled, before turning on her heels and marching towards the portal, her sentinels in tow. “Shadowsong, wait here. Make sure she doesn’t run.” 

With only a clank of metal as an answer, Maiev Shadowsong positioned herself beside the portal, waiting for Sylvanas. Walking through Wyrmrest with her was not something Sylvanas was looking forward to, not in the slightest. 

The clothing they brought her was warm, with furs on the inside and insulating fabric on the outside. As Xerestrasza fixed the cloak around her shoulders, fastening it once on her chest and once with a belt over her shoulder, she murmured, “Good luck in your duel, Sylvanas. I hope you understand the choice you have made.” She sounded genuinely saddened, which struck Sylvanas harder than she had expected. 

“A choice I had to make,” she curtly answered, already turning to the portal when Alexstrasza suddenly laid a warm, heavy hand on her shoulder. 

“If you are to take a weapon, I would want you to take mine,” she said, pulling her heavily adorned and engraved, slightly curved dagger from her belt, flipping it around in her hand so she held the tip of it between her fingers, offering it to Sylvanas. “But know that if you take it from my hand, you will be out of my reach.” 

“Then I will accept your final offer, Life-Bi… Alexstrasza.” With those words, Sylvanas closed her hand around the pommel offered to her. It was still warm from the Dragon Queen’s grasp. She steeled herself, tucking a stray lock of hair behind an ear, then turned around to walk to the portal. The Red Dragonflight parted before her as she took long strides, forming a path for her to walk. Their heads were bowed in a kind of respect and their eyes were filled with various degrees of sadness and disbelief. They looked at her right up until Warden Shadowsong’s footfalls followed hers through the arcane. 

Tyrande had her back turned to Sylvanas, not responding when the undead stopped underneath the large arcway of the temple’s front. A light snow dusted her shoulders, but she barely seemed to be phased by the cold. When Sylvanas cleared her throat and was still met with silence, she walked up beside the priestess, staring out over the mountainous landscape for a few moments before speaking up. 

“You know that I have chosen peace in return for protection, do you not? Alexstrasza made me swear not to wage war again.” 

“Then she is foolish to believe you. Your lies in the present will not cover up your actions in the past.” Tyrande put distance in between them, a few paces, with a speed that Sylvanas wasn’t able to match. She raised her warglaive into a fighting stance, ready to strike. 

This wasn’t how Sylvanas had always imagined facing Tyrande Whisperwind. She had thought of a battlefield, strewn with the dead of both their armies. She had imagined looking the Night Warrior deep into her eyes with a grin on her face and a banshee shriek burning at the back of her throat. She had thought they would both have an arrow drawn, waiting to see who would fire first and who would have to dodge first. Perhaps even in a dungeon, with one of them in chains, left to the other’s mercy. Or in a war room against a greater enemy. In a council for an embittered peace, in a mock celebration when Horde and Alliance would cease their bickering. There were so many places where they could have met, so many places better than how they stared each other down now. 

Sylvanas knew her eyes burned red no longer. She knew that the dagger she held was no match for Tyrande’s moonglaive. She felt her bony form nearly shrink further when seeing just how much Tyrande’s body had been enhanced by Elune’s darkest powers. She felt fear curdle deep in her chest as she raised her dagger and slid one foot back over the ground for stability. “What do you want from me, Whisperwind?” she asked again. 

“I want your blood,” Tyrande grated, before roaring a warcry and slashing diagonally in the air. 

With much less grace than she had held before the Forsaken coup, Sylvanas sidestepped, then rolled forward to dodge another slash, this time a vertical one, barely avoiding being bisected. 

_ Strike, and Alexstrasza won’t ever let you back into her sanctuary_, she reminded herself when she saw an opening between Tyrande’s greaves and kneecap. Thus she jumped backwards, ducked underneath a bolt of arcane energy, and felt the edge of Tyrande’s weapon shear off a few hairs on the top of her head. But her speed was nothing compared to what it used to be. She was already feeling tired and the ache of the still-healing wound in her back made itself known again. The pain threw her into disbalance and she stepped on an area of snow so compacted by the footsteps of herself and Tyrande that it was nearly ice. With a surprised cry, she slipped and fell, landing painfully on her left elbow and lower arm. 

Hastily, she got to her feet again, just as the Night Warrior fired a stream of energy at the spot in which she just laid, leaving the stone there free of ice entirely, as the hot water vapour escaped into the cold air. Sylvanas stumbled back to avoid a low strike that could have hacked a limb clean off. Then she suddenly felt no ground beneath her right foot anymore. 

The staircase. 

The wide staircase that led up to Wyrmrest Temple’s front doors. She was standing right at the top of it, wobbling back and forth with only one foot still on the upper step. Gritting her teeth, Sylvanas threw her weight forward, only barely managing to keep her balance and place both feet back onto solid ground. Her heels were still not standing on anything, so she was dangerously close to falling down the stairs. But she could take no step to fully re-establish her position since within a split second, the blade of Tyrande’s glaive was underneath her chin, pressing into the skin.

“You won’t gain anything by killing me,” Sylvanas rasped. “Only some brief personal satisfaction.” The metal was cold against her throat, though she could feel more of the energies that coursed through the blade, sparking just underneath the surface. 

“Do not lie to me, Sylvanas.” Tyrande’s eyes glowed with her Goddess’s power. “I will free Azeroth of your undead forever.” 

“That you already have.” In a futile attempt to regain a bit more balance, since Tyrande could send her tumbling down the staircase with a simple kick, Sylvanas tried to sidestep the blade. But Tyrande was quick to flip the glaive in her hand, so now the flat of it pressed against the undead elf’s temple. 

“You have pretended to tuck your Forsaken away in Theramore, to distract from the undead army that has been amassing near Icecrown Citadel, waiting for your command. The Lich King is stirring in the encasings of his throne, horrific abominations are moving in the ruins of Lordaeron. I know what you are doing, Windrunner,” she hissed. 

“I - I don’t… I don’t understand.” The sheer shock of her words was nearly enough to make Sylvanas lose her balance. “The Lich King? Icecrown Citadel?” she stammered. “Lor’themar and Lilian Voss have taken care of the Forsaken in Theramore, accepting an offer from Jai- Lady Proudmoore. I have been… _ here_, all along.” 

“You are lying!” Tyrande roared. “I simply know you are!” 

Sylvanas flinched, and the brief jerk of her body made her feet slip on the snow. Her arms flailed as she felt herself falling. Then Tyrande grabbed the front of her cape and lifted her from the ground, so her knuckles pressed underneath Sylvanas’s chin. For a few moments, the former Quel’dorei forgot that she did not need to breathe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Whisperwind,” she rasped. “Where is Ranger Kalira? Is she participating in this nonsense? How about Anya? Velonara? Are they… are they safe?” 

“Anya was killed in the uprising which I thought had taken your life too. That Lady Proudmoore had _ said _had taken your life. I don’t know of the others.” Tyrande’s breath made little clouds in the freezing air around them. Her eyes flitted between Sylvanas’s eyes and the landscape behind her. She bared her fangs in a grimace and Sylvanas could see her think deeply. Then the night elf’s face softened ever so slightly and for a moment, it seemed as if she would let Sylvanas go, until she suddenly dropped her and Sylvanas felt bands of energy wrap around her body. Tyrande held her suspended in the air in front of her. “No,” she whispered, then raised her voice, though she kept it low and threatening. “No, I want to know the truth, before I tear you apart.” 

The magic that swirled in the air around the undead seemed unstable, sparkling with rage as Tyrande did herself. It pricked on her skin and when she opened her mouth, she could taste the ozone on her tongue. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been at Windrunner Spire… and here. I didn’t speak to anyone but Proudmoore and my sisters.” She started to sound more and more like she was caught in a time loop. Tyrande’s words had shocked her so that she could barely think of anything else than what was happening to the Forsaken. 

For a moment, Tyrande closed her eyes, brow still deeply furrowed. Then she relaxed the first with which she controlled her powers and Sylvanas fell. At first, she thought she could land on her feet. Then, with speed and grace that Sylvanas hadn’t seen coming from a mile away, the Night Warrior suddenly kicked her in the chest and she went flying down the stairs, landing roughly on the stone steps. She felt her flesh bruise and the skin above her eyebrow split open, allowing dark blood to trail down the side of her face. Wisely, she laid still until Tyrande approached her. “Why?” she hissed at the night elf. 

“Personal satisfaction,” was Tyrande’s answer. “If there is another war coming, I will save my strength. But beware, Sylvanas Windrunner. I will come for you when it’s all over. Whether you’re involved in these activities or not. I will have my vengeance.” 

With those words, she departed. Sylvanas felt the air hum with magic, but she didn’t look up from the staircase until there was absolute silence around her. Then did she slowly pick herself up and climbed the stairs with a limping gait. On the terrace before the entrance to the temple she picked up the Dragon Queen’s dagger, still unstained by blood. She wrapped the cape she had been given more tightly around herself as she stumbled through the corridors of Wyrmrest Temple, until her feet took her to the Chamber of the Aspects. She hadn’t taken more than a step into the room when someone moved near the portal to the Ruby Sanctum. 

“Sylvanas! By the Titans, you are alright.” 

Alexstrasza’s arms wrapped around the cold elf, who found herself lifted from the floor as the Life-Binder hugged her tightly. A pained gasp escaped her mouth and the dagger fell from her hand. 

“Alright isn’t precisely how I feel,” she said, though there was no malice in her voice. “I… I didn’t fight her.”

At those words, Alexstrasza’s eyes first widened, then she scrunched her eyebrows together in a concerned frown and averted her bronze gaze for a moment. “I know.” Her voice was but a whisper. “You kept your blade clean… You made the right choice.” 

~~~

_ Throne room. Throne room. Throne room. Stormwind’s throne room. _The words rang through Jaina’s head as she shut her eyes, her left hand quickly weaving the runes for a teleportation spell into the air. As it quickly neared completion, she spared one last look to Sylvanas, meeting her eyes. There was a flash of something on her face that Jaina couldn’t quite place, but it seemed almost kind. Gratitude? Before she could figure it out, she finished her spell, and her focus was thrown into keeping herself from falling over as she suddenly found herself standing before Anduin’s throne. 

She’d never been able to see much of a resemblance between him and his father. He’d always taken after his mother, with his silky golden locks and soft blue eyes. Even his frame more closely resembled Tiffin’s, as he was lean and, frankly, bordering on thin, while his father had always looked the strongest in any given room. Now as Anduin was hunched over his throne, she could see the likeness. The way his eyebrows creased, nearly forming a unibrow with how deeply he was frowning. The way he looked up to her, first looking at her in relief to see her before the slightest bit of anger shone through. The way his lips were pursed tightly, almost looking pained. Given the situation, Jaina wouldn’t be surprised if he truly was.

She held up her hands the way she once had with Varian, wordlessly pleading with him to allow her to speak before he did. Though he looked like he had plenty to say, he didn’t go as far as to open his mouth, and instead gave her a small, almost helpless, nod. 

“I can explain,” she quickly assured him, though even as she said that, she wasn’t sure if she could. She could explain and justify why she’d let Sylvanas live to herself, given that she had been there to hear her speak. She could explain and justify it to Alleria and Vereesa, who knew her as their sister and, even if they didn’t want to admit it, still held some hope for said sister to be returned to them. She could certainly explain and justify it to Alexstrasza, who believed that all life held value. But Anduin… Though both he and Sylvanas had been put in charge at the same time for the same reasons, she had given him nothing but hell during the time in which she held the position of Warchief. Immediately after the defeat of the Burning Legion, she’d struck harder than they had, completely obliterating not only Teldrassil, but any of Anduin’s hopes for peace between the factions. Though she could understand Sylvanas’s reasoning behind the attack, that didn’t mean that it hadn’t hurt those she had targeted. 

Anduin raised an eyebrow, and only then did Jaina realize that she still needed to speak. She cleared her throat, if only to buy herself a bit more time before doing so. “I know that I lied. I know that, worse yet, I allowed Sylvanas to live and to escape Grommash Hold, and I know that I’ve been helping her ever since then.” Tides that sounded bad. Jaina winced at her own words before she could find it in herself to continue. “Anduin. You are easily the most optimistic, caring person I know.” Her eyes flickered briefly to his much-needed walking stick. He’d acquired it during the Pandaria campaign, due to yet another deed done by Garrosh that Jaina could hardly bring herself to think about, and yet he had never given up on talking with the other man. That had confused and upset Jaina, and she still had yet to figure out exactly why he had insisted on continuing to visit, even after being crippled and having his life threatened time and time again, but she couldn’t think of a better or, frankly, more relevant example of his unending optimism and care for others. He seemed to notice her glance, as he looked to his walking stick as well, only for his face to flush slightly as he made sense of what his auntie meant. 

“I know what I did was wrong,” Jaina continued, feeling ever so slightly more confident in herself. Even if Anduin did end up disagreeing with her, he would understand where she was coming from. That was worth something. “But I do believe that, not only has she become a slightly better person already, but that Alexstrasza resurrecting her will only further that improvement. And I’m willing to help however I can, and actually keep you in the loop as I do so.” 

The room went silent as Anduin seemed to consider what she’d said, and Jaina was very suddenly and very acutely aware that all of the guards present had their eyes glued on her. She could already imagine their reactions of horror, shock, and quite possibly amusement that someone as spiteful and Horde-loathing as she was would so readily defend the woman who had burnt Teldrassil, an act even more murderous and destructive than the bombing of Theramore. At least Theramore could be repaired. She forcibly shoved the thought from her mind, focusing instead on Anduin’s face. He wasn’t looking at her, instead staring more toward her feet, and he looked so exhausted. So young and yet so old at the same time, making her desperately wish she’d been able to save Varian for what was likely the millionth time in her life.

“Jaina,” he said after a painstakingly long pause. The sound of her name alone was enough to cause the mage to stiffen slightly. She wasn’t afraid of Anduin in the slightest, and knew that no matter what he said, they were close enough that he wouldn’t necessarily be mad at _ her. _ She was more worried about what would become of Sylvanas, as well as her own reputation within the Alliance. “Before I jump to any conclusions, I think I actually have to see for myself how she’s doing.” He spoke slowly, carefully, and seemed to calculate everything he said. Were her heart not pounding, Jaina would have been incredibly proud. “I know you well enough to trust that you know what you’re doing. However… you have to understand how I feel about Sylvanas. I’ve never lost faith in anyone before. Many call it a flaw, but I truly believe in redemption for any who seeks it. After Teldrassil, though…"

“I know,” Jaina breathed. He wanted to meet Sylvanas again. Nerve wracking, naturally, but she knew that if anyone could convince Sylvanas to be semi-kind for once, it would be her. “I understand. It’s hard to believe that she could truly turn a new leaf, and I felt the same way at first as well. As long as you’re willing to hear me out, I’m happy.”

Slowly, Anduin nodded, and he finally spared a glance to the enraptured guards in the room. “You’re all dismissed. I won’t be here for much longer anyway, and I have Jaina with me in case anyone attacks.” He waited a moment as they started filtering out, then shut his eyes. “That includes you, Valeera.” 

A slew of curses sounded to Jaina’s right, and she nearly jumped out of her skin as Valeera seemed to walk out of the wall itself. It wasn’t an incredibly shadowed spot, and the elf wasn’t wearing anything but her normal armor that would conceal her. Jaina had to blink a few times, her mouth agape. “Were you… the whole time?”

She was given only a sly grin in response, but didn’t have time to question further as Anduin spoke up. “She’s always around. I once offhandedly mentioned to a guard that I was craving a particular type of tea, and five minutes later, she was handing me a piping cup of it.” He opened his eyes again, and though he didn’t smile entirely, Jaina could tell that he was fighting one off. “She had that same look on her face.”

“Aren’t you two glad I’m loyal to the Alliance?” Valeera’s voice was teasing. “I mean, _ obviously _ there are some Horde members that could convince me otherwise… One paladin in particular that I would just _ love _to serve under… Or on top of. Or insi-”

“Nope,” Jaina said quickly, feeling the slightest headache start to form. She shot a silencing glare to Valeera, whose grin only widened further. “No more.”

“Okay, okay.” She held her hands up in mock surrender, strutting towards the door where the rest of the Stormwind guard had departed just moments before. She spun as she walked down the corridor, facing Anduin and Jaina with a quirked eyebrow. “But don’t pretend you’re better than wanting to sleep with a member of the Horde or two, _ Lady _Proudmoore.”

“Out. Out. Out!” Jaina pinched the bridge of her nose, having to work hard to fight off the urge to simply fire a few ice bolts directly into the childish blood elf’s heart. She was given a mere laugh in response as Valeera, upon reaching the door, gave them both a grand bow before slipping through the door and slamming it behind her. The sound echoed throughout the royal chambers for what seemed like ages before silence took its place. Slowly, Jaina turned back toward Anduin, who seemed to have relaxed considerably from when she had first teleported in. “Thrall,” she said after a moment. “She meant Thrall. No one else. Which, by the way, is an untrue-”

“-rumor spread by those who wish to tarnish your reputation by using the sexist ideals that a woman’s love life is shameful. I know.” Anduin offered her a small smile, one that both teased her for having said that exact thing time and time again, as well as allowed her to relax and drop the subject. She offered a hesitant smile back, and then the mood shifted to be serious once more. Briefly, just before her adoptive nephew spoke, Jaina wished for Valeera’s presence again. If only to lighten the mood a bit, and subtract from the heaviness of her treason. “As I said before we were… blessed by Valeera’s presence, I do wish to meet Sylvanas again. Preferably in a more private location.” Jaina nodded her agreement. “Only once I have both seen her in person and fully heard your side of the story will I make any sort of decision on how to proceed.” While he had somewhat regained his serious demeanor, it softened the slightest bit, though not from amusement as it had earlier. “I love you, Auntie. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here.”

“Thank you,” Jaina breathed, a wave of relief flooding her. She visibly relaxed, all too aware suddenly of how much tension she’d been carrying up until that moment. “I truly do appreciate it, Anduin. Let’s see her first… I’m a little worried about what Tyrande is doing. Then we can discuss why I’ve made the choices that I have.”

Anduin gave a simple nod in agreement, and Jaina once again weaved the runes for a portal into the air. Only once the King had grabbed his cane and made his way by Jaina’s side did she complete the spell, and within seconds they found themselves in the snowy plains of Northrend, before the ice coated pillars of Wyrmrest Temple. It wasn’t hard to spot where Sylvanas was, as just feet away, Tyrande was being ushered through a portal by Alexstrasza herself. Tyrande caught the mage’s glance, narrowing her eyes in response but still leaving Northrend. She could feel her heart practically leaping into her throat in pure relief as Alexstrasza then made her way back to Sylvanas, sitting on the field beside her. An audible sigh escaped the human, even as she felt Anduin come to a stop behind her and make a muffled coughing noise, attempting to mask his surprise. 

While Jaina was already aware of the fact that elves resembled cats in more ways than one, she was still surprised by just how much Sylvanas resembled a sad, wet cat, at that moment. Her hair was partially soaked, as snow was still melting in a few areas. Her ears were drooping into her neck, quivering slightly as she bent her head so Alexstrasza could clean a gash in her forehead. The resemblance didn’t stop there, as she hissed lowly when spotting Jaina, though it was likely meant towards Anduin. Jaina didn’t miss how the elf inched closer to Alexstrasza. She shivered, and looked utterly miserable. 

“Her eyes…” Anduin said quietly, as he observed how the Life-Binder carefully lifted a hand to Sylvanas’s chin, so she could resume cleaning the injury on her face. 

It took Jaina a few moments before she understood what the King meant. She had nearly gotten used to the now dull eyes of the former Warchief, but Anduin had never seen them without their blazing red glow. For a moment, he stepped back, then he undid the clasps of Shalamayne’s sheath and put the weapon down beside the portal. Evidently, he knew the rules of the Ruby Sanctum. After a moment of consideration, Jaina laid down her staff too. Naturally, she was able to cast without it, but respecting Alexstrasza’s rules was important.

When Anduin walked up to where Sylvanas sat, still using his cane to assist him, the undead tried to rise to her feet rapidly. Yet Alexstrasza laid a large hand on her shoulder, grounding her in place. To everyone’s surprise, except perhaps the Life-Binder’s, she sunk back into a sitting position, frowning as the Dragon Queen traced a hand along the edge of her shoulder blade. 

“It’s dislocated,” she explained as green energy started to gather in her fingertips. “You fell down the stairs, didn’t you?”

“I was kicked,” Sylvanas muttered, bracing herself for pain yet feeling none as she was healed without as much as a shock or wince. 

Meanwhile, Anduin had kneeled down, a few paces away from the pair. The distance was as much out of respect as out of a precaution. Jaina hovered behind him, though she wasn’t sure who she wanted to protect more, Anduin or Sylvanas. She hoped that neither of them needed protection, and that neither of them would pick a fight with the other. She was fairly certain that Anduin didn’t want to do that, but about Sylvanas she wasn’t completely sure. Though she had never seen the elf in a state where she was less likely to suddenly fly at the young lion. Alexstrasza had essentially bracketed her with her own body, sitting so close to the miserable elf that it was almost an embrace. If she would attempt to attack, all the Life Binder would have to do is hold her a little closer. 

“She told everyone, didn’t she?” Sylvanas asked, averting her eyes from Anduin and Jaina. Her voice was rough and she shivered once again as Alexstrasza’s fingers traced along the wound on her forehead, sealing it without any pain. There was nothing but a thin scar on the skin now. “Who else will come for me?” 

“No one will,” Alexstrasza assured her, slowly standing up and offering Sylvanas her hand. After the both of them were on their feet, she took the cape off the elf’s shoulders and seemed to give her a soft push in between her shoulders, as if she were a mother, encouraging her child to approach another young elf. 

Carefully, Jaina stepped closer, standing between Anduin and Sylvanas. “We only want to talk with you, Sylvanas.” She felt immensely relieved when the undead slowly nodded, seeming to know just as well as her that there was no other way to go about this. 

~~~

She led them to the greenhouse. Where else could she have brought them, than to the only place she considered to be her own sanctuary? She led Anduin and Jaina past the first few plots of land, which were mostly bare earth. Then she found a way through the overhanging branches of a part with tropical plants, holding the large leaves to the side, so they wouldn't slap her in the face. The fact that that fate befell Anduin was a nice coincidence, which she could not possibly have foreseen. Out of habit, she picked up a large yellow fruit that had fallen from one of the tropical trees, tossing it in a basket along the path. She heard the King make a surprised sound at that, but ignored it, not even putting a sly smile on her face that said ‘I told you that I changed.’ 

At last, the plants gave way to an open area, with a round bench encircling a large tree in the middle. From there, she could just see her own piece of land in the greenhouse, where carnations were just starting to emerge from their buds. Jaina had seen them too. 

“You actually planted them!” she said, smiling brightly at Sylvanas, despite their current situation. Anduin, who sat in between them, was awkwardly tracing the uneven stone underneath their feet with the end of his cane. Sylvanas couldn’t exactly blame him. 

“I did,” she slowly said. “They complement all the greens of the vegetables I have in there. And Alexstrasza’s… mystery plant. I still have no idea what it is.” 

To her surprise, Anduin spoke up, his eyes still aimed at his boots. When he sat in this way, Sylvanas could truly see the boy in him. Wrenched out of the life of a youngster far too early. “It’s a variety of dragon rose. I recognize the shape of it, since, uh, I was once given one such flower too. They come in many colours, so while I had the black variety, you might have something different entirely. Perhaps red, for Alexstrasza’s dragonflight.” His voice had become slightly dreamy, and Sylvanas found herself averting her own eyes. 

She wondered whether she had become so placid in Anduin’s eyes that he allowed himself to get lost in whatever it was that he had on his mind. Perhaps she had been right about him, in the words she had spat at Jaina in Grommash Hold. A soft King wasn’t a good ruler. “We haven’t come here to talk about flowers, lion cub.” 

“I know that,” Anduin said, righting himself up and resting his cane against the bench in between himself and the former Banshee Queen. Today appeared to be full of the most unusual ways to meet her adversaries. Or perhaps her former adversary, in Anduin’s case? She wasn’t completely certain where the young king now stood on the line between ally and foe. With a deep breath, he continued. “I must admit that I didn’t expect you to have survived the coup in Orgrimmar. If I may ask you both, what moved you to make the choices you’ve made, that day?” 

“Well, apparently I inspired so much pity in Proudmoore that she let me live,” Sylvanas started, giving Jaina a sidelong glance. As the Admiral opened her mouth and drew herself up a bit higher, Sylvanas lifted her hand and cut her off. “As for myself… Once someone who has done terrible things has seen what awaits them in the shadowy lands beyond death, they will try to outrun it forever. And I have seen what, and _ who_, lies in wait for me there, so I had little choice but to try to stave off the inevitable for as long as I can. Perhaps after another lifetime of planting flowers and playing with baby dragons, my fate will shift a little.”

“Another lifetime,” Anduin echoed. “You want Alexstrasza to resurrect you.” It wasn’t even a question. Perhaps he had seen how the Life-Binder had fussed over Sylvanas’s wounds. 

“She has already done most of the work, now she just needs to get this corpse of mine to breathe air again and my heart will need to beat once more.” Sylvanas laid a hand on her chest, feeling only the cold that her undead body radiated from within. It hurt more than she wished to admit. “But yes, that is what I want. I have lost count of how many times I have sworn not to pick up my weapons again, but if you wish so, I could add another such promise onto the growing pile.” 

“I saw it in your eyes,” Jaina suddenly said, staring up at the arcane patterns that twisted over the ceiling of the greenhouse. She licked her dry lips before continuing with a deep sigh. “In Orgrimmar. I saw it in the Hold. When you told me that… that you just wanted to go home. Though I can’t say I haven’t doubted your intentions once or twice since then.” 

“Naturally, as I have most certainly doubted yours _ once or twice_. Especially when I was…” Not wanting to finish such an admission to weakness, Sylvanas waved with one hand in the air, vaguely twirling her fingers upwards.

“When your mind was fading into smoke as much as your body, which was most of the times that we have seen each other, recently.” 

Sylvanas couldn’t deny the truth of that. To avoid getting any more of such statements from Jaina, she turned to Anduin and asked him: “And what about you, cub? Do you doubt my intentions? Or hers?” 

After a few moments, in which he intently stared at the ground and pinched his eyebrows together ever so slightly, Anduin answered: “Jaina has done what she thought best. That’s all she’s ever done. Until you prove her wrong, I will do my best to see the good in her decisions.” 

“So it all depends on me?” Sylvanas’s signature sly grin spread onto her lips, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking at Jaina for a few moments. “And here I thought that Lady Proudmoore so valiantly decided to let me live.” 

“Don’t do this Sylvanas,” Jaina grated. “I’ve had enough Windrunner nonsense for today. Besides, there wasn’t anything particularly valiant about the situation in Grommash Hold. If I recall correctly, you were spitting blood onto my clothing and you were in a great amount of pain, unable to hide that. You practically _ begged _me to-” 

“I did not!” 

Jaina paused, then heaved a sigh. There was exhaustion in her eyes. That was not out of the ordinary, but this particular exhaustion was new, undoubtedly caused by the events of the past hour or so. Some part of Sylvanas gnawed at her to care more, to insist that the mage took her own needs into consideration and, perhaps, nap. She dared not say anything of the sort, though. It was naught more than a weakness waiting to be exploited, and Sylvanas made a mental note to sort out her complicated feelings towards Proudmoore once she was alone. “Fine,” Jaina said after a moment. Too tired to even argue. An odd state for a typically opinionated woman. She glanced to Anduin, though Sylvanas did not do the same. “I propose that we do not let this news spread any further than it has already. This will be a public spectacle, and given the issues we’re already facing, no one wants to deal with that. You and Baine _ just _signed that trade treaty, after all.

“My only exception would be Lord Theron. He knew Sylvanas back when she was alive, and we’ve been growing closer throughout the reconstruction of Theramore. He may be able to offer advice.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Anduin frowned the slightest bit, his eyes flickering back over to the garden. He watched it for a few seconds. “He may be inclined to alert the remainder of the Horde leaders of Sylvanas’s survival. I may be able to understand your reasoning, Jaina, but this is _ treason. _Many will not let it go so easily.”

“No,” Sylvanas said, finally able to wrench her eyes off of Jaina. She looked to Anduin, who glanced back to her in turn. “Lor’themar may have an elven tendency to love drama, but he wouldn’t be so quick to forget all that he and his people owe me. I’ll go with Proudmoore to meet him and express my… desire, I suppose, to live once more.”

“You just want to see the look on his face when he sees you again,” Jaina said, the barest trace of a smile allowing the ends of her lips to quirk upwards. Sylvanas met her eyes, smirking in response.

“That too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yea originally genn was supposed to be in this chapter but braz and i realized that would be Homophobia -xore


End file.
